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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


u^^*- 


^ 


The  Rise  of  Dennis 
Hathnaught 


To   My  Wife, 
JESSIE  HOWELL   MacCARTHY 

Who  Assisted  Me  in  Gathering 

Material 

and  Who  Typed  the  Manuscript^ 

This  Book  Is  Inscribed. 


THE  RISE  OF  DEMIS 
HATHMU&HT 


Life  of   the   Common   People 

Across  the   Ages  as  Set 

Down    in    the  Great 

Books  of  the 

World 


By  JAMES  PHILIP  MacCARTH Y 

Author  of  "The  Newspaper  Worker" 


Brooklyn— New  York 
THE  WRITERS'  PUBLISHING  CO. 


Copyrlgrhted  for  the  Author 
by  the  Writers'  Fnbllshlng; 
Co.,  Brooklyn^— New  York, 
TJ.  S.  A.,  1915.  Application 
for  British  Copyright  pend- 
ing. 


Set  np  and  Blectrotyped. 
First  Edition  of  1,000  Print- 
ed In  September,  1915.  The 
Writers'  Fabllshing  Com- 
pany, Brooklyn— New  York, 
V.  S.   A. 


on 


i3 


hA 


t1l> 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT'S 
GENEALOGICAL   TREE 

Chapter  I.  page 

Dennis  Hathnaught's  Lowly  Origin; 
His  Biological  Ancestry;  Primi- 
tive Man;  Ancient  Contempt  for 
Labour,  EflFects  of  Evolution  and 
Suggestion  on  Human  Progress...  1 
Chapter  II. 

Dennis  Hathnaught  Early  Assumes 
the     Hod;     Account     of     Ancient 

Labour  and   Slavery 13 

Chapter  III. 

Dennis'  Iron  Collar — "Servus  Sum." 
Slavery  in  the  Roman  Republic  and 

Empire 27 

^  Chapter  IV. 

— '  The  World's  Midnight— Hathnaught 

as   Serf;    Feudal   System,   its   Rise 
and   Decline;   Misery   of  the   Corn- 
el mon   People   in   the    Middle   Ages; 
If)  Debt  of  Modern  Times  to  Mediaeval 

CM  Thinkers  and  Doers 33 

o  Chapter  V. 

When    Dennis    Hathnaught    was    a 
Saxon;  Life  Under  Manorial  Sys- 
tem and  the  Peculiar  Saxon  Laws 
t  which  form  the  Basis  of  all  Good 

g  Modern  Laws.    Effects  of  the  Nor- 

^  man  Conquest 44 

f>  Chapter  VI. 

\  The     Black     Death     Emancipates 

Dennis;  By  making  Labour  Scarce, 
this  Pestilence  led  to  Wage  System 
and    Growth    of    Class    Conscious 

Working   Class 55 

"*  Chapter  VII. 

Dennis  Hathnaught  Becomes  a 
Citizen;  Rise  of  Cities  in  Middle 
Ages  and  Struggle  of  Hard  Work- 
ing Burghers  with  the  Lawless, 
LTseless  and  Ignorant  Nobility 64 


462375 


Chapter  VIII.  page 

Dennis  Founds  the  Hanseatic 
League;  Weary  of  Being  Robbed 
by  Thieving  Barons,  Common  Men 
Unite  in  Great  Trade  Confederation 
and  Become  More  Powerful  than 
Nations 81 

Chapter   IX. 

Fritz  Hathnaught  and  the  Peas- 
ants' War;  Struggle  of  German 
Labour  in  Sixteenth  Century  to 
Emancipate  Itself  from  Feudal  Op- 
pression, and  Unspeakable  Manner 
in  which  Nobles  put  the  Rising 
Down;   Belgium   Had   a   Precedent     90 

Chapter   X. 

Dennis  in  Sixteenth  Century  Eng- 
land; Remarkable  Prosperity  of 
English  Hathnaughts  in  this  Age  as 
Shown  by  Froude;  Guilds  and  Lon- 
don Companies 9.5 

Chapter  XI. 

Dennis  in  Seventeenth  Century 
England;  Macaulay's  Graphic  Pic- 
ture of  the  Times;  Degradation  of 
the  People;  Lack  of  Sympathy  with 
Suffering;  Brutality  of  Sports  and 
of  the  Nobility lOG 

Chapter  XII. 

Dennis  and  the  Industrial  Revolu- 
tion; Domestic  Labour  gives  way 
to  Factory  System ;  Misery  of  Child 
Labour  before  Enactment  of  Fac- 
tory Laws Ill 

Chapter  XIII. 

Jacques  Bonhomme,  French  Hath- 
naught ;  Causes  that  led  a  Degraded 
and  Enslaved  People  to  Turn  Upon 
their  Oppressors  and  Annihilate 
them  in  the  French  Revolution....   12S 

Chapter  XIV. 

Dennis  the  Ploughman  in  Politics; 
Conditions  that  led  to  Emancipation 
of  English  Agriciiltnriil  Labourers 
and  their  l.'.iifranchiscincnt  in  1884.   1S8 


Chapter  XV.  page 
The  Right  Hon.  Dennis  Hath- 
naught,  M.P. ;  Account  of  Recent 
Socialistic  Legislation  in  England 
under  Leadership  of  Lloyd  George 
and  of  tiie  Labour  Party;  Curb- 
ing the  Lords 149 

Chapter  XVL 

Patrick  Hathnaught,  Home  Ruler; 
True  Cause  of  Modern  Irish  Dissen- 
sion is  Religious  Differences;  Two 
Races  in  Ireland,  Protestants  and 
Catholics;  Signs  of  Better  Times..   169 

Chapter  XVII. 

Slavic  Hathnaughts,  Ivan  and 
Michael;  Extraordinary  Power  of 
Nobles  and  Church  over  the  People; 
Emancipation  of  the  Serfs ;  Struggle 
toward  Freedom 170 

Chapter  XVIII. 

Brother  Jonathan  and  Uncle  Sam; 
Brief  Sketch  of  American  Industry; 
Rise  of  the  Trusts;  Tariff  Reform; 

-     Effect     of     Slavery     on     Southern 
Character 180 

Chapter  XIX. 

Dennis  Setting  His  House  in  Order; 
Economic  Reform;  Socialism;  Syn- 
dicalism and  Sabotage;  What  is  to 
Follow  Socialism?  Feminism;  Trade 
Unions   193 

Chapter  XX. 

Dennis  Inquiring  into  Land  Titles; 
Henry  George's  Single  Tax;  The 
Physiocrats;  Malthusian  Laws  of 
Population;  Unearned  Increment..  211 

Chapter  XXI. 

Dennis  Becomes  a  Literary  Hero; 
Summaries  of  Books  Touching  upon 
Certain  Peculiar  Phases  of  the 
Labour   Movement 217 

Chapter  XXII. 

Hathnaught  versus  Have-and-Hold ; 
Barbarism  of  People  and  Nobles 
of  Olden  Times;  Whim  being  Re- 
placed by  Responsibility;  Dennis 
Approaching  Real  Freedom 226 


DENNIS    HATHNAUGHT    RISES    TO 
EXPLAIN. 


"The  Rise  of  Dennis  Hathnaught"  was 
not  written  with  an  eye  to  obtaining  a 
university  degree.  It  is  therefore  chatty 
and  informal,  rather  than  painfully  sci- 
entific and  academic.  We  should  not 
brood  too  much  over  the  miseries  of  a 
dead  past  when  there  is  so  much  to  be 
done  in  the  living  present.  But  man 
may  be  taught  to  judge  more  intelligent- 
ly of  his  own  time  and  its  problems  if 
he  has  some  idea  of  past  times  and  their 
institutions.  In  this  spirit  Dennis  Hath- 
naught takes  the  platform  for  a  short 
address  to  his  "Fellow  Citizens."  He 
will  be  grateful  for  any  applause  he  may 
receive,  and  hopes  that  adverse  critics 
will  put  cotton  batting  around  the  bricks 
they  may  throw. 

Yeoman  service  for  human  liberty  has 
been  done  by  persons  with  a  sense  of 
humour.  No  man  who  understands  the 
wholesome  effect  of  laughter  ever  throws 
a  bomb  or  tries  to  reform  the  world  by 
assassination.  If  the  fool  that  shot  J.  P. 
Morgan  had  brooded  less  and  laughed 
more,  he  would  not  have  taken  himself 
so  seriously.  There  has  been  great  in- 
justice  in   the  world,   but  we  have   now 


reached  the  age  of  adjustments,  when  the 
better  elements  of  Capital  and  Labour 
are  working  earnestly  to  bring  about  a 
more  equitable  social  system. 

The  Golden  Age  will  not  be  ushered  in 
by  dividing  the  accumulations  of  tho 
rich  among  the  poor.  It  is  a  question  if 
the  vicious,  idle,  proletariat,  who  works 
only  under  compulsion  of  economic  pres- 
sure, is  not  a  greater  menace  than  the 
unscrupulous  capitalist  who  exploits  hu- 
man labour.  It  is  decreed  by  the  courts 
eternal  that  in  the  sweat  of  his  face  man 
shall  earn  his  bread,  and  this  applies 
equally  as  well  to  John  D.  Rockefeller  as 
it  does  to  Dennis  Hathnaught.  The 
Standard  Oil  Company  would  not  last  a 
year  if  Rockefeller  dawdled  away  all  his 
time  on  the  golf  links.  That  is  his  recre- 
ation, just  as  that  of  Dennis  Hathnaught 
is  bending  the  elbow  with  his  cronies  at 
Casey's  little  place  on  the  corner.  Every 
man  to  his  taste. 

We  cannot  reform  overnight  a  world 
that  has  been  millions  of  years  in  the 
making.  There  Is  good  basis  for  the  argu- 
ment that  we  might  lessen  the  distance 
to  the  Millennium  if  we  Improved  our 
manners.  There  is  nothing  so  discourag- 
ing as  the  spectacle  of  a  loud-mouthed 
economic  reformer,  whose  vocal  rearing 
of  the  ideal  Republic  keeps  pace  with 
bad  manners  that  find  vent  in  dental 
archaeology — the  excavating  of  a  ruined 
molar,  with  a  young  sapling — and  the 
editing  of  fingernails  with  a  pair  of 
pocket  scissors. 

Let  us  have  patience.  Progress  Is  an 
eternal    and    an   ordered   law,    and    it    is 


written  in  the  stars  that  we  shall  not  go 
backward.  Every  man  has  his  day.  The 
castle  and  the  hut  are  interchangeable 
residences.  Emerson  summarizes  the  so- 
cial history  of  the  ages  in  a  stanza: 

The    lord    is    the    peasant    that    was. 
The  peasant  the  lord  that  shall  be; 
The  lord  is  hay,  the  peasant  grass. 
One    dry,    and    one    the    living    tree. 

This '  unceasing  struggle  operates 
through  the  laws  of  Evolution  and  Sug- 
gestion. A  thing  that  has  had  no  begin- 
ning can  never  have  an  end.  The  seem- 
ing zenith  is  but  the  nadir  of  new 
heights.  The  Ultimate  beckons  to  us 
bvit  never  waits.  We  are  on  our  way. 
Whither,  only  the  Fates  may  tell,  and 
Destiny  is  not  loquacious. 


CHAPTER  I. 

DENNIS    HATHNAUGHT'S    LOWLY 
ORIGIN. 

Man,  that  fleck  of  dust  in  the  Infinite, 
swelling  with  pride  before  the  altar  of 
iDls  Ego  and  indulging  his  fancy  in  self- 
worship  imagines  himself  a  Chantecler, 
Lord  of  Creation,  Master  of  Woman  and 
Summouer  of  the  Sun.  Engaged  as  he 
is  in  the  pursuit  of  the  useless,  and  eter- 
nally struggling  for  selfish  preferment  or 
meaningless  pleasure — a  spendthrift  of 
time  as  well  as  of  money — we  might  im- 
agine the  world  a  great  Cosmic  Bloom- 
ingdale,  were  it  not  that  here  and  there 
one  sees  the  thinker  and  the  doer — the 
student  busy  with  his  experiments,  the 
worker  labouring  in  shop  or  field. 

Eons  ago,  more  years  than  mind  can 
reckon,  this  old  world  of  ours  was  plung- 
ing aimlessly  through  the  night  of 
Chaos,  and  intellectually,  it  would  be 
plunging  through  it  yet,  were  it  not  that 
in  every  age,  and  at  intervals  almost 
cyclic  there  arose  men  of  vision  with  the 
teaching  and  preaching  instinct  strong 
within  them — in  China  a  Confucius,  In 
Greece  a  Socrates,  in  Italy  a  Savonarola, 
in  Germany  a  Luther — men  with  that 
sublime    courage    and    touch    of    divinity 


2  DENNIS    HATHN AUGHT 

that  gives  them  kinship  with  Christ 
and  puts  the  fire  of  inspiration  upon 
their  words.  When  such  men  are  abroad 
in  the  land,  tyranny  and  injustice  flee 
as   from   a  wrath   that  is   overwhelming. 

Prom  the  time  the  first  man  was  agi- 
tated by  the  first  thought,  we  have  heard 
much  of  Good  and  of  Evil,  forces  repre- 
senting some  sort  of  a  contest  for  the 
mastery,  constantly  going  on  in  the 
world.  Yet  there  are  very  few  really 
good  people  and  very  few  bad  ones.  All 
men  bear  the  mark  of  caste,  the  stigmata 
of  environment,  example  and  habit,  and 
the  numerosity  of  the  race  constitutes  a 
mediocrity,  obsessed  by  the  fetish  of 
prestige  and  eternally  aping  the  manners 
and  pattering  the  words  of  other  men. 
It  is  a  physiological-biological  phenome- 
non that  the  vast  majority  of  men  and 
women  come  into  the  world  with  still 
born  brains — from  the  cradle  to  the 
grave  exhibiting  in  their  lives,  the  static 
monotony  of  unchanging  sameness.  One 
cannot  be  said  to  be  truly  good,  unless 
his  whole  course  of  action  is  character- 
ized by  sacrifice  and  disinterested  living, 
with  never  a  tho  jght  of  approbation,  ap- 
preciation or  emolument.  No  one  that 
shows  remorse  can  be  said  to  be  truly 
bad. 

Rational  and  normal  man  may  be  di- 
vided into  three  classes — the  Progressive, 
the  Lack-alert  and  the  Dumbwit. 

The  Progres.sive  has  the  instinct  of 
per.^onaI  leadership  and  acts  upon  his 
own  initiative.  His  only  authority  is  ex- 


DENNIS    II ATIIN AUGHT  3 

perience.  He  is  like  the  Monad  of  Leib- 
nitz, the  universe  in  miniature. 

The  Lack-alert  does  well  under  in- 
struction, but  must  always  be  directed. 
He  reverences  authority,  even  in  the  face 
of  his  own  experience  and  better  judg- 
ment. Tradition,  Father's  politics  and 
Mother's  religion  are  all  sufficient  for 
this  simple  child  of  nature.  There  isn't 
the  cream  of  an  idea  on  the  top  of  his 
bottle;  he  is  a  skim-milk  thinker.  Par 
excellence  he  is  the  Conventionarian. 

The  Dumbwit  acts  only  under  orders 
and  must  be  driven  to  his  task  like  the 
g-alley  slave.  Trying  to  get  ideas  into 
his  head  is  like  signalling  to  Mars.  He 
is  the  backbone  of  the  Caste  system — 
thinks  men  are  born  into  classes  and 
that  they  must  always  remain  so.  With 
the  Lack-alert,  he  is  the  great  breeding 
ground  of  true  snobbery,  despising  his 
own  kind  and  deferential  to  those  whom 
he  looks  upon  as  of  the  better  classes. 
He  laughs  lonpv  and  'ondly  when  the 
Man  with  the  New  Idea  finds  his  way 
to  King  Ignorance  barred  by  the  two 
trusty  guardsmen,  Prejudice  and  Bigotry, 
and  is  subjected  to  the  badgering  of  the 
King's  impish  children.  Little  Pooh-Pooh 
and  Taint-so. 

Intelligence  is  as  rare  as  radium  and 
man,  all  but  mummified  by  acquiescence 
in  traditional  authority,  grows  slowly  into 
fullness  of  the  Spirit  ana-»an  understand- 
ing of  the  higher  life  and  its  significance. 
What  is  popularly  called  intelligence  is 
more  often  cunning,  shrewdness,  saga- 
city.   True  intelligence  is  vision  that  lifts 


4  DENNIS    HATHN AUGHT 

one  above  the  clouds  where  the  sweep 
of  sky  is  unbroken.  There  is  an  ig- 
norance of  culture  as  well  as  of  illiteracy. 
One  may  find  ignorance  in  academic  halls 
quite  as  readily  as  in  the  haunts  of  the 
day  labourer.  When  you  realize  the 
depths  of  your  own  ignorance — the  in- 
iquity of  race  and  religious  hatreds,  so- 
cial snobbery,  and  industrial  injustice, 
you  have  reached  the  foothills  from 
which  you  may  view  the  heights  it  is 
necessary  to  climb  to  get  in  communion 
with  true  knowledge.  Aesculapius  re- 
storing the  sight  of  the  Aristophanic 
Plutus,  typifies  the  meaning  of  education 
which  is  simply  the  effort  to  make  the 
blind  see. 

It  is  the  ground  idea  of  modern  think- 
ers that  the  chief  aim  of  existence  is 
race  culture  and  that  progress  is  an 
eternal  and  an  ordered  law.  When  we 
walk  abroad  in  the  world  of  Imagination 
and  Memory,  we  see  everywhere,  wrecks 
and  ruins  and  pulled-down  things;  but 
through  an  opening  in  the  trees  we  may 
see  the  rebuilding  in  the  land  of  To- 
morrow, of  things  that  will  be  after  we 
are  gone. 

Progress,  the  battle  of  Today  with 
Yesterday  for  the  possession  of  Tomor- 
row, operates  through  two  great  forces 
^Evolution,  which  is  biological  or  phys- 
ical; and  Suggestion,  which  is  psycho- 
logical or  mental. 

In  tracing  the  biological  or  physical 
history  of  man,  we  find  that  his  needs 
and   his   primitive   struggles  with  nature 


DENNIS   H AT HN AUGHT  5 

to  gain  subsistence,  made  work  a  neces- 
sity. Through  successive  a,e:es  he  gradu- 
ally gained  knowledge,  and  through  Sug- 
gestion improved  the  implements  of 
labour.  Hunger  made  it  necessary  to 
get  food.  The  cold  suggested  shelter  and 
led  him  to  protect  his  body  by  a  cover- 
ing, usually  of  skins,  the  beginnings  of 
clothing.  Primitive  man  dwelt  in  trees, 
in  lakes,  and  in  caves.  It  was  a  strug- 
gle for  existence  with  little  idea  of  co- 
operation. Every  man's  hand  was  raised 
against  his  brother  and  war  and  blood- 
shed were  the  universal  rule.  Painfully 
man  went  through  successive  stages — the 
stone  age,  the  age  of  bronze  or  metals, 
etc.  Uncounted  ages  must  have  passed 
before  the  suggestion  of  soil  cultivation 
came  to  mankind,  and  Agriculture  gave 
the  first  impetus  to  Civilization. 

In  the  Bible  we  are  told  that  the  first 
man  was  named  Adam  and  that  he  start- 
ed perfect — sort  of  armed  cap-a-ple  for 
the  struggle  of  life,  which  in  Eden,  was 
no  struggle  at  all  until  Eve  had  that 
apple  discussion  with  the  serpent.  It  was 
a  golden  age  such  as  poets,  among  others 
the  pagan  Hesiod,  loved  to  picture.  But 
science  pretty  conclusively  proves  that 
friend  Adam  might  better  be  called  Den- 
nis and  surnamed  Hathnaught.  Par  from 
having  fallen  from  a  state  of  pristine  in- 
nocence, he  is  on  the  ascending  scale, 
working  painfully  toward  the  land  of 
better  things.  It  has  been  a  hard  jour- 
ney, and  it  is  a  far  cry  from  the  flg  leaf 
to  the  dress  suit. 


6  DENNIS    HATHNAUGHT 

You  will  find  ample  evidence  of  this 
In  Sir  John  Lubbock's  "Prehistoric 
Times,"  and  "Origin  of  Civilization"; 
Drummond's  "Ascent  of  Man";  Darwin's 
"Origin  of  Species"  and  "Descent  of 
Man";  L.  H.  Morgan's  "Ancient  Society"; 
Winwood  Reade's  "Martyrdom  of  Man"; 
the  various  works  of  Sir  Henry  Sumner 
Maine;  Edmund  B.  Tylor's  "Early  His- 
tory of  Mankind,"  and  "Primitive  Cul- 
ture"; Frazer's  "Golden  Bough." 

In  the  view  of  Science  man's  progress 
is  upward,  and  out  of  an  original  state 
of  barbarism  and  savagery,  he  is  working 
toward  culture  and  the  higher  life.  Brief- 
ly, theology  holds  that  man,  through  the 
sin  of  Adam  degenerated,  and  can  only 
be  redeemed  through  the  grace  of  re- 
ligion. Science  holds  that  barbarism  was 
a  stage  of  evolution  or  progress  and  in 
no  sense  the  result  of  degeneration. 

"Primitive  Man"  is  also  ably  discussed 
in  a  work  of  that  name  by  Louis  Figuier, 
in  which  not  only  is  it  shown  that  man 
harks  back  to  an  immense  antiquity,  but 
that  he  has  had  to  fight  for  every  ad- 
vantage he  has  gained.  He  goes  into 
full  discussions  of  the  "Stone  Age"  and 
the  "Age  of  Metals,"  and  shows  man 
dwelling  in  caves  and  hollows,  dressed  in 
skins,  and  limited  to  a  few  implements 
of  wood  and  stone. 

Early  society  originated  in  the  family 
under  the  rule  of  the  father  or  patriarch; 
an  aggregation  of  families  formed  the 
clan  or  tribe  under  a  chief,  and  as  au- 
thority spread,  a  confederation  of  tribes 


DENNIS    HATIINAUGHT  7 

became  the  nation  under  a  King.  Au- 
thority is  designed  to  establish  internal 
order  and  external  security.  It  originated 
in  Suggestion  and  its  development  has 
been  constantly  along  the  lines  of  Evolu- 
tion. In  a  primitive  combat  one  brute 
overcomes  another,  and  victory  naturally 
suggests  the  idea  of  domination. 

All  living  creatures  from  ants  to  man 
have  more  or  less  of  the  gregarious  spirit 
and  gather  in  communities.  In  the  fam- 
ily relation,  however  primitive,  the  au- 
thority of  the  parents  is  established  over 
the  children,  and  some  investigators  be- 
lieve that  in  the  very  earliest  of  times, 
the  family  circle  constituted  a  matri- 
archy, gynecocracy  or  metrocracy,  with 
the  mother  supreme  over  all.  As  man 
began  to  acquire  a  knowledge  of  the  sex 
relation  and  its  significance,  the  father 
became  all  powerful  and  gradually  there 
developed  the  subjection  of  woman  which 
still  obtains  in  the  world  with  such  force, 
buttressed  as  it  is  with  tradition  and  a 
so-called  religious  sanction,  that  millions 
of  foolish  virgins  and  matrons,  gladly 
subscribing  to  the  convention  that  they 
are  a  weak  and  inferior  lot,  become  the 
most  venomous  opponents  of  sex  equality 
and  "Woman's  emancipation. 

Lawlessness  and  absence  of  restraint 
breed  discomfort  and  insecurity,  and  au- 
thority grew  in  proportion  as  the  leaders 
that  had  won  the  right  to  command 
through  brute  power  and  strength  of  will 
and  mind,  gained  adherents.  It  is  natural 
for    authority,    unrestrained    by    external 


8  DENNIS    HATHNAUGHT 

forces  or  internal  opposition  to  drift  to- 
ward absolutism,  and  so  finally  through- 
out the  world  the  old  freedom  of  the  in- 
dividual will  disappeared  and  tyranny- 
was  established  with  the  power  of  life 
and  death  over  subjects,  vested  in  the 
rulers.  This  tyranny  in  time  took  on  a 
kind  of  sacerdotal  function  and  gradually 
in  men's  minds  grew  a  belief  in  the 
divinity  of  Kings  and  the  custom  of  in- 
vesting them  with  power  through  elab- 
orate and  ornate  symbolism  and  cere- 
mony. 

Human  proji-ress  has  l)eeh  greatly  ad- 
vanced by  man's  efforts  to  mitigate  the 
miseries  of  existence.  In  an  age  of  cold 
and  lack  of  comfort  we  may  well  believe 
that  fire  came  into  the  life  of  man  as  a 
great  blessing.  This  will  always  be  asso- 
ciated with  the  wonderful  story  of  Pro- 
metheus. Taking  pity  on  man,  Prome- 
theus stole  fire  from  Heaven  and  gave  it 
to  humankind  whereupon  he  incurred  the 
wrath  of  Zeus,  and  was  condemned  to  be 
bound  on  a  rock  of  the  Caucasus  with  a 
vulture  continually  gnawing  at  his  liver. 
On  this  myth  Aeschylus  based  his  great 
tragedy  of  "Prometheus  Bound,"  which 
is  supposed  to  be  the  only  existing  part 
of  a  trilogy  unfolding  the  whole  story. 

Hesiod,  who  was  approximately  a  con- 
temporary of  Homer,  also  tells  the  Pro- 
methean myth  in  his  "Works  and  Days," 
and  it  will  always  be  to  his  honour  that 
although  he  lived  in  an  age  when  labour 
was  despised,  he  sang  of  the  dignity  of 
labour. 


DENNIS    H AT HN AUGHT  9 

God  himself,  we  are  told  in  the  Bible, 
indorsed  labour  \/heu  he  said  that  in  the 
sweat  of  his  brow,  man  should  earn  his 
bread. 

According  to  Herodotus,  an  important 
business  among-  the  Thraeians  was  the 
sale  of  their  children  for  exportation. 
But  industry  was  not  held  in  high  re- 
pute. Thus:  "To  be  idle  is  most  honour- 
able; but  to  be  a  tiller  of  the  soil,  most 
dishonourable;  to  live  by  war  and  rapine 
most  glorious."  Handicrafts  were  little 
esteemed  in  those  early  ages  of  war  and 
the  exploitation  of  man.  Says  Herodotus: 
"Whether  the  Greeks  learned  the  custom 
from  the  Egyptians  I  am  unable  to  de- 
termine with  certainty,  seeing  that  the 
Thraeians,  Scythians,  Persians,  Lydians, 
and  almost  all  barbarous  nations  hold 
in  less  honour  than  their  other  citizens, 
those  who  learn  any  art  and  their  de- 
scendants, but  deem  such  to  be  noble  as 
abstain  from  handicrafts,  and  particular- 
ly those  who  devote  themselves  to  war. 
All  the  Greeks,  moreover,  have  adopted 
the  same  notion,  and  especially  the  Lace- 
daemonians; but  the  Corinthians  hold 
handicraftsmen  in  least  disesteem." 

There  were  many  honourable  exceptions 
to  this  general  contempt  for  labour  that 
characterized  the  upper  classes  of  an- 
tiquity. Everybody  is  familiar  with  the 
story  of  Cincinnatus,  who  when  called 
to  become  dictator  of  Rome  was  at  the 
plough,  according  to  Livy.  Plutarch  In 
his  life  of  Philopoemen,  called  "the  last 
of  the  Greeks,"  relates  that  a  woman  of 


10  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT. 

Megara,  mistaking  that  distinguished 
man  for  a  servant  desired  him  to  assist 
her  in  the  business  of  the  kitchen,  where- 
upon he  set  about  to  cleave  some  wood. 
English  story  tellers  relate  a  similar  tale 
of  King  Alfred,  with  the  exception  that 
the  Saxon  was  put  to  watching  cakes  to 
prevent  them  from  burning. 

While  on  his  estate  Philopoemen  slept 
as  one  of  the  labourers  and  he  worked, 
according  to  Plutarch,  with  his  vine 
dressers  and  ploughmen.  Thus,  one  of 
the  greatest  men  of  his  age  touched  el- 
bows with  the  humblest,  and  ennobled 
labour  by  example. 

Theognis  has  many  a  fling  at  those 
that  toil,  and  Aristotle  had  a  contempt 
for  labour  as  a  mere  manual  phase  of 
existence.  He  held  the  barbarian  to  be 
an  inferior  breed,  born  to  obey,  as  the 
Greek  was  to  command,  and  assigned 
him  as  slave,  the  duty  of  doing  work 
with  hand.s,  leaving  the  citizen  time  for 
politics,  social  enjoyment  and  the  pursuit 
of  the  beautiful  as  reflected  in  art,  letters, 
music,  philo-sophy,  and  the  gymnasium, 
where  he  developed  symmetry  of  body. 
Woman  he  regarded  as  merely  a  race 
propagator,  in  every  way  inferior  to  man 
and  subject  to  him. 

Aristophanes,  to  some  extent,  shared 
with  Aristotle  and  other  ancients,  this 
contempt  for  labour,  for  we  see  him  hurl- 
ing at  his  enemy  Euripides  the  taunt 
that  his  mother  had  gained  a  livelihood 
as  an  herb  woman. 

Curiously  enough,  too,  Socrates,  as  re- 


DENNIS   HATHNAUGHT  11 

ported  by  Xenophon  in  his  "Economics," 
takes  largely  the  same  view  of  woman  as 
a  domestic  labourer  that  Aristotle  did,  al- 
though his  great  disciple  Plato,  in  his 
"Republic,"  would  elevate  her  position 
and  improve  her  education. 

In  the  so-called  suffragette  comedies 
of  Aristophanes — the  Thesmophoriazusoe, 
the  Eccleziazusoe,  and  the  Lysistrata,  we 
find  ancient  woman's  revolt  against  the 
intolerable  domestic  slavery  to  which 
custom  had  condemned  her,  a  demand 
akin  to  that  of  the  suffragette  of  to-day. 

Industrial  pursuits  among  the  ancients 
were  often  hereditary,  son  following 
father.  In  discussing  the  Spartans  or 
Lacedaemonians,  Herodotus  says:  "In 
this  respect  also  the  Lacedaemonians  re- 
semble the  Egyptians:  their  heralds,  mu- 
sicians, and  cooks  succeed  to  their 
fathers'  professions;  so  that  a  musician 
is  son  of  a  musician,  a  cook  of  a  cook, 
and  a  herald  of  a  herald;  nor  do  others 
on  account  of  the  clearness  of  their  voice 
apply  themselves  to  this  profession  and 
exclude  others;  but  they  continue  to 
practice  it  after  their  fathers.  These 
things,  then,  are  so." 

In  this  little  book,  we  shall  endeavour 
to  trace  the  history  of  the  Hathnaughts 
through  all  its  stages — compulsory  la- 
bour or  slavery;  serfdom  and  feudalism; 
rise  of  the  cities;  trade  development; 
crafts;  wages;  factories;  trade-unionism; 
socialism;  syndicalism;  feminism — as  re- 
flected in  the  works  of  historians,  phil- 
osophers, novelists,  economists,  poets,  of 


12  DENNIS   HATHNAVUHT 

all  ages  and  nations.  Naught  shall  be 
set  down  in  malice,  yet  while  we  hope 
to  receive  the  benediction  of  "Imprima- 
tur," there  are  some  we  feel  that  will 
load  us  with  maledictions  and  consign  us 
to  the  common  hangman. 


CHAPTER  II. 

DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  EARLY  AS- 
SUMES THE  HOD. 

Man  is  essentially  a  peddler  and  a 
■trader.  Little  Stonehatchet  Skinclothes, 
when  he  could  not  get  what  he  wanted 
by  force,  learned  through  the  suggestion 
of  exchange  to  "Swap"  with  his  cave  and 
tree  dwelling  playmates  as  little  Johnny 
Jones  does  with  the  boys  of  today.  The 
elder  Skinclothes  dickered  and  bartered. 
As  time  went  on  and  man's  necessities 
grew,  the  ancients  began  making  trading 
trips  by  caravans,  camels,  pack  horses, 
and  small  boats,  just  as  the  elder  Jones 
now  possesses  great  workshops,  fields, 
golden  with  plenty,  good  highways,  rail- 
roads and  steamships  to  facilitate  the 
business  of  commerce.  From  ancient 
barter  has  developed  modern  commerce, 
and  our  system  of  coinage  and  the  con- 
veniences of  our  banking  arrangements 
are  the  successors  of  the  articles  of  ex- 
change, coloured  beads,  wampum,  trin- 
kets, fancy  cloths  and  the  innumerable 
other  substitutes  of  the  primitive  world 
for  money. 

In  primitive  times  labour  was,  for  the 
most  part,  compulsory.  So  remote  In  the 
history    of    the    industrial    life    was    the 

13 


14  DENNIS   HATHNAUGIIT 

origin  of  the  institution  of  slavery  that 
surviving  annals  show  no  record  of  its 
heginning.  War  made  it  possible  to  get 
slaves  easily  and  their  number  grew  to 
such  proportions  that  in  the  time  of  Sylla 
there  were  13,000,000  of  the  tribe  in  Italy 
alone.  We  find  this  statement  in  the 
International  Encyclopedia.  The  same 
authority,  taking  its  facts  from  pre-ex- 
isting authorities,  tells  us  that  slave  la- 
bour was  first  made  a  systematic  business 
by  the  Phoenicians,  who  established  a  reg- 
ular trade  of  buying  and  selling  slaves. 

Aristotle,  who  limited  culture  to  his 
own  ideal — the  citizen  of  a  Greek  city 
state — supports  the  institution  of  slav- 
ery by  elaborate  argument  in  his  "Poli- 
tics." He  describes  a  Greek  gentleman's 
family  as  consisting  of  man,  wife,  chil- 
dren and  slaves.  The  position  of  the 
wife  as  defined  by  Aristotle  is  far  from 
a  happy  one.  Her  main  purpose,  accord- 
ing to  the  Stagirite,  is  to  perpetuate  the 
species  and  to  superintend  the  labour  of 
the  slaves  and  the  upbringing  of  the 
children.  She  must  submit  without  ques- 
tion to  her  husband's  commands  and 
could  never  hope  to  share  in  his  social 
or  political  life.  The  white  slave  of  to- 
day, whose  wrongs  are  being  so  widely 
discussed,  in  ancient  Greece  would  really 
be  the  only  free  woman,  for  the  seclu- 
sion of  married  women  made  it  possible 
only  for  the  courtesans  of  Greece  to 
share  the  larger  life  of  the  citizens. 

We  have  mentioned  the  part  the  Phcr- 
nlclans    have    played    in    the    history    of 


DENNIS  HATIINAUQHT  15 

slavery.  Greatest  of  the  Phoenician  colo- 
nies was  Carthage  on  the  north  coast 
of  Africa,  which  in  turn  grew  to  be  a 
powerful  state,  the  rival  of  Rome  and 
an  actual  menace  to  the  supremacy  of 
that  mistress  of  the  world.  Splendid  pic- 
tures of  life  in  Carthage  and  the  deplor- 
able state  of  the  industrial  classes  are 
shown  by  Gustave  Flaubert  in  his  ro- 
mance of  "Salammbo,"  daughter  of  Ha- 
milcar  and  sister  of  Hannibal. 

It  was  the  Phoenicians  who  developed 
early  industrial  life  beyond  all  antiquity. 
Herodotus,  in  the  opening  of  his  history, 
tells  of  their  migration  from  the  Red  Sea 
to  the  Mediterranean  and  of  distant  voy- 
ag'es  made  by  their  merchants,  all  of 
which,  we  know,  tended  to  the  growth 
of  industrial  life  and  increased  the  de- 
mand for  labour. 

Herodotus  has  some  curious  entries  on 
the  subject  of  labour.  For  example,  Tri- 
tantsechmes,  son  of  Artabazus,  Satrap  or 
governor  of  Babylon,  had  so  great  a 
number  of  Indian  dogs  that  four  large 
towns  in  the  plains  were  exempted  from 
all  other  taxes  so  that  their  inhabitants 
might  find  food  for  the  dogs.  So  you 
see,  milady  who  neglects  human  kind 
and  children  in  her  devotion  to  her  lap- 
dog  has  good  ancient  precedent  in  pro- 
viding her  pet  with  a  retinue  of  servants. 

Herodotus  tells  us  that  in  Egypt,  the 
women  attended  markets  and  traffic  while 
the  men  stayed  at  home  weaving.  Men 
carried  burdens  on  their  heads,  women 
on  their  shoulders.   Sons  were  not  com- 


16  DENNIS  UATHN AUGHT 

pelled  to  support  their  parents,  but 
daughters  had  no  choice  and  were  com- 
pelled to  do  so.  The  wash  lady  was  an 
important  worker,  no  doubt,  for  the 
"Egyptians  wore  linen  garments,  con- 
stantly fresh  washed.  Men  wore  two 
garments,  women  but  one,  so  we  might 
see  the  spectacle  in  an  ancient  Egyptian 
substitute  for  a  department  store  of 
greater  variety  in  men's  goods  than  in 
those  of  women.  Ldnen  was  an  impor- 
tant article  of  manufacture  and  of  ex- 
port. 

Embalming  was  an  important  trade 
in  Ancient  Egypt  and  Herodotus  tells 
some  facts  about  the  embalmers  that 
prove  their  business  methods  not  unlike 
that  of  the  undertaker  of  to-day,  who 
shows  the  bereaved  various  coffins  with 
prices  carefully  graded  to  meet  the  purs- 
es of  mourners.  When  the  dead  body 
was  brought  to  the  embalmers,  they 
showed  the  bearers  wooden  models  of 
corpses  made  exactly  alike  by  painting. 
They  showed  the  most  expensive  man- 
ner of  embalming,  next  an  inferior  kind, 
and  lastly  the  cheapest  of  all.  There 
have  been  tricks  In  all  trades,  yea,  from 
the  very  beginning. 

In  the  time  of  Cheops,  Herodotus  says, 
the  wicked  king  shut  up  the  temples  and 
ordered  all  the  Egyptians  to  work  for 
him.  Some  were  appointed  to  draw  stones 
from  the  quarries  in  the  Arabian  moun- 
tain down  to  the  Nile;  others  to  receive 
the  stones  when  transported  in  vessels 
across  the  river  and  to  drag  them  up  the 


DENNIS   HATHNAUOHT  17 

mountain  called  the  Libyan.  One  hun- 
dred thousand  men  at  a  time  worked  in 
this  manner,  each  party  during  three 
months. 

"The  time,"  continues  Herodotus,  "dur- 
ing which  the  people  were  thus  harassed 
by  toil,  lasted  ten  years  on  the  road 
which  they  constructed,  along  which  they 
drew  the  stones,  a  work,  in  my  opinion, 
not  much  less  than  the  pyramids,  .  .  . 
On  this  road  then  ten  years  were  ex- 
pended, and  in  forming  the  subterranean 
apartments  on  the  hill,  on  which  the  py- 
ramids stand,  which  he  had  made  as  a 
burial  vault  for  himself,  in  an  island 
formed  by  draining  a  canal  from  the 
Nile."  Twenty  years  were  expended  in 
the  building  of  the  pyramid  itself.  Hero- 
dotus adds  that  an  interpreter  told  him  a 
certain  inscription  on  the  pyramid  ex- 
plained how  much  had  been  expended  In 
radishes,  onions,  and  garlic  for  the 
workmen — one  thousand  six  hundred  tal- 
ents of  silver.  The  historian  speculates 
how  much  more  was  expended  in  iron 
tools,  in  bread,  and  in  clothes  for  the  la- 
bourers. 

To  provide  all  these  necessities  of  food 
and  dress  would  imply  that  many  other 
thousands  of  Hathnaughts  were  engaged 
in  weaving  and  in  working  iron,  while 
tmcounted  other  unfortunates  made  the 
soil  productive  of  crops,  the  prosperity  of 
which  they  could  not  hope  to  share  with 
a  King  so  avaricious  and  egotistical  that 
he  drained  the  labour  of  the  land  for 
twenty  years  so  that  his  vile  and  worth- 


18  DENNIS   HATHNAUGHT 

less  body  mig-ht  have  imposing  sepulchre 
at  the  end  of  his  infamous  reign  of  fifty 
years.  The  pyramid-building  craze  seiz- 
ed his  brother  Chephren  also,  and  in  the 
course  of  his  fifty-six  years  of  power 
he,  too,  exhausted  the  land.  "Thus,"  says 
Herodotus,  "one  hundred  and  six  years 
are  reckoned  during  which  the  Egyptians 
suffered  all  kinds  of  calamities." 

Blessings  returned  with  Mycerinus, 
son  of  Cheops,  who  "permitted  the  peo- 
ple, who  were  worn  down  to  the  last  ex- 
tremity, to  return  to  their  employments." 

With  the  Scythians,  Herodotus  says, 
cattle  raising  rather  than  agriculture 
was  the  great  industry  and  this  was  car- 
ried on  by  the  labour  of  the  tribe  of 
Hathnaught.  The  Scythians  had  a  cruel 
habit  of  depriving  their  slaves  of  sight. 
In  describing  their  methods  of  dairy  la- 
bour he  tells  of  a  rude  kind  of  churning: 
"When  they  have  finished  milking,  they 
pour  the  milk  into  hollow  wooden  vessels, 
and  having  placed  the  blind  men  round 
about  the  vessels,  they  agitate  the  milk; 
and  having  skimmed  off  that  which 
swims  on  the  surface,  they  consider  it 
the  most  valuable,  but  that  which  sub- 
sides is  of  less  value  than  the  other." 

All  of  which  would  indicate  that  but- 
ter making  is  an  ancient  industry,  but 
we  no  longer  think  it  necessary  to  de- 
prive  the   workers   of  sight. 

It  has  always  been  a  matter  of  aston- 
ishment to  students  of  man's  social  his- 
tory, that  great  masses  of  the  people 
should  uncomplainingly  and  servilely  sub- 


DENNIS   HATHN AUGHT  10 

mit  to  oppression.  Herodotus  tells  a 
story  of  certain  Scythians  who,  having 
withdrawn  from  their  country  for  a  pe- 
riod of  twenty-eight  years,  found  them- 
selves on  their  return  opposed  by  a  new 
and  vigorous  population — young  men 
born  of  the  blind  slaves  and  the  wives 
of  the  absent  Scythians.  When  they 
found  it  impossible  to  overcome  these 
youths,  one  of  the  wiser  among  the  re- 
turning Scythians  suggested  that  they 
throw  away  their  arms  and  rush  upon 
their  opponents  with  whips,  for,  he  sage- 
ly argued,  the  whip  would  remind  them 
of  their  condition  of  servitude.  The 
Scythians  carried  out  the  suggestion,  and 
the  youths  docilely  submitted  to  be  beat- 
en and  enslaved.  Like  the  young  lackey 
in  Charles  Rann  Kennedy's  "Servant  in 
the  House,"  who  was  shocked  to  see  his 
young  mistress  assist  in  clearing  the  ta- 
ble, his  ancient  prototypes  probably 
"knew  their  places." 

How  else  can  we  account  for  the  sub- 
mission of  the  Helots,  the  Hathnaughts 
of  Spai'ta,  who  far  outnumbered  their 
oppressors?  The  Langhorns,  summariz- 
ing ancient  testimony,  in  their  transla- 
tion of  Plutarch  assert  that  "these  poor 
wretches  were  marked  out  for  slaves  in 
their  dress,  their  gestures,  and,  in  short, 
in  everything.  They  wore  dogskin  bon- 
nets and  sheepskin  vests;  they  were  for- 
bidden to  learn  any  liberal  art,  or  to 
perform  any  act  worthy  of  their  masters. 
Once  a  day  they  received  a  certain  num- 
ber of  stripes  for  fear  they  should  for- 


20  DENNIS   HATHNAUGHT 

get  they  were  slaves,  and  to  crown  all, 
they  were  liable  to  the  cryptia,  which 
was  sure  to  be  executed  on  all  such  as 
spoke,   looked,    or   walked   like   freemen." 

"Perhaps,"  says  Plutarch,  "it  was  the 
cryptia,  as  they  called  it,  or  ambuscade, 
if  that  was  really  one  of  this  lawgiver's 
(Lycurgus')  Institutions,  as  Aristotle  says 
It  was,  which  gave  Plato  so  bad  an  im- 
pression both  of  Lycurgus  and  his  laws. 

"The  governors  of  the  youth  ordered 
the  shrewdest  of  them  from  time  to  time 
to  disperse  themselves  in  the  country, 
provided  only  with  daggers  and  some 
necessary  provisions.  In  the  daytime 
they  hid  themselves,  and  rested  in  the 
most  private  places  they  could  find,  but 
at  night  they  sallied  out  into  the  roads, 
and  killed  all  the  Helots  they  could  meet 
with.  Nay,  sometimes  by  day  they  fell 
upon  them  in  the  fields  and  murdered 
the  ablest  and  strongest  of  them.  Thu- 
cydides  relates  in  his  history  of  the  Pelo- 
ponnesian  war,  that  the  Spartans  select- 
ed such  of  them  as  were  distinguished 
for  their  courage,  to  the  number  of  two 
thousand  or  more,  declared  them  free, 
crowned  them  with  garlands  and  con- 
ducted them  to  the  temples  of  the  gods; 
hut  soon  after  they  all  disappeared;  and 
no  one  could  either  then  or  since  give 
account  in  what  manner  they  were  de- 
stroyed. 

"Aristotle  particularly  says  the  ephori, 
as  soon  as  they  were  invested  in  their 
office,  declared  war  against  the  Helots, 
that  they  might  be  massacred  under  pre- 


DENNIS   HAT  UN  AUGHT  21 

tense  of  law.  In  other  respects  they 
treated  them  with  great  inhumanity; 
sometimes  they  made  them  drink  till  they 
were  intoxicated,  and  in  that  condition 
led  them  into  the  public  halls  to  show 
the  young  men  what  drunkenness  was. 
They  ordered  them  to  sing  mean  songs, 
and  to  dance  ridiculous  dances,  but  not 
to  meddle  with  any  that  were  genteel 
and  graceful.  Thus,  they  tell  us  that 
when  the  Thebans  afterwards  invaded 
Laconia  and  took  a  great  number  of  the 
Helots  prisoners,  they  ordered  them  to 
sing  odes  of  Terpander,  Alcman  or  Spen- 
dori,  the  Lacedaemonian,  but  they  ex- 
cused themselves,  alleging  that  it  was 
forbidden  by  their  masters.  Those  who 
say  that  a  freeman  in  Sparta  was  most  a 
freeman,  and  a  slave  most  a  slave,  seem 
well  to  have  considered  the  difference  of 
states." 

Other  authorities  take  exception  to 
this,  declaring  that  isolated  instances  of 
cruelty  prove  no  systematic  oppression  of 
the  Helots.  Thomas  Keightley  In  his 
once  popular  school  "History  of  Greece" 
summarizes  all  the  evidence  favourable  to 
the  Spartans  and  declares  that  the  con- 
dition of  the  Helots  more  resembled  that 
of  the  villeins  of  the  Middle  Ages,  or  the 
peasants  of  Russia,  than  of  slaves  in 
general.  But  Keightley,  venturing  the 
hope  that  his  history  might  be  regarded 
as  a  good  introduction  to  Thirlwall's 
History  of  Greece,  betrays  his  leanings, 
for  Thirlwall's  sympathies  are  aristo- 
cratic, even  as  those  of  the  abler  George 
Grote  are  democratic. 


22  DENNIS    HATHNAUGHT 

In  Rome  the  Impatience  of  the  Hath- 
naug-hts  was  always  greater  th^n  among 
other  nations  of  antiquity.  In  Livy,  Plu- 
tarch and  other  ancient  writers  we  are 
entertained  with  the  stoi-y  of  the  strug- 
gles of  the  Hathnaughts  or  plebeians  for 
recognition  and  share  in  the  govern- 
ment, of  the  agrarian  agitations  and  of 
the  tumults  that  resulted  in  the  deaths 
of  Tiberius  and  Caius  Gracchus,  cham- 
pions of  the  tribe  of  Hathnaught. 

Scholars  differ  concerning  the  extent 
to  which  the  compulsory  labour  of  the 
Hathnaughts  was  employed  in  ancient 
times.  The  Encyclopspdia  Britannica 
(11th  edition)  article,  "Labour  Legisla- 
tion," declares  that  there  was  undoubt- 
edly a  certain  amount  of  free  labour, 
even  at  the  time  when  Egypt  was  plung- 
ed in  the  craze  of  pyramid  building. 

Grote,  in  his  "History  of  Greece,"  has 
an  interesting  account  of  the  poor  free 
labourers  of  Greece,  and  a  later  author- 
ity, William  Scott  Ferguson,  in  "Greek 
Imperialism,"  maintains  that  great  mass- 
es of  the  free  Athenians  were  forced  by 
circumstances  to  labour  and  to  take  an 
active  part  in  the  trade  of  the  day.  This 
would  imply  an  honourable  antiquity  for 
the  pay  envelope. 

Theodor  Mommsen,  whose  "History  of 
Rome"  Is  a  work  of  Immense  learning 
despite  certain  alleged  shortcomings  on 
the  side  of  partisanship,  takes  account  of 
the  free  labour  of  ancient  Rome.  As 
fresh  land  was  acquired  by  the  state  the 
patrician    class    claimed    to    control    it,    a 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  2.3 

claim  bitterly  contested  by  the  Hath- 
naughts,  particularly  of  the  agricultural 
class.  The  struggle  took  the  form,  he 
says,  of  a  demand  for  political  rights 
and  resulted  in  the  appointment  of 
tribunes  of  the  Plebs  with  power 
of  veto.  This  struggle  with  privi- 
lege lasted  two  hundred  years.  An 
important  change  was  effected  by  the 
Canuleian  law  which  made  marriage  be- 
tween plebeians  and  patricians  valid.  The 
Licinian  law,  eighty  years  later,  admitted 
plebeians  to  the  consulship  and  required 
the  employment  of  free  labour  in  agri- 
culture. Gradually  there  arose  a  new  ar- 
istocracy, partly  plebeian  in  origin,  but 
in  course  of  time  those  new  families  be- 
came as  oppressive  as  the  old,  for  in  the 
time  of  Tiberius  Gracchus  the  free  agri- 
cultural class  had  disappeared  and  the 
land  had  become  divided  into  immense 
estates,  worked  by  slave  labour.  Cen- 
turies were  to  pass  before  this  yoke  was 
removed  from  the  necks  of  the  tribe  of 
Hathnaught. 

In  Rome  in  the  time  of  Caesar  and  Ci- 
cero, according  to  W.  Warde  Fowler  (So- 
cial Life  at  Rome  in  the  Age  of  Cicero) 
the  poor  free  plebeian  population  was 
housed  In  great  lodging-houses  call- 
ed Insulae  or  islands  because  they 
stood  detached  and  surrounded  on  all 
sides  by  streets  just  as  islands  are  by 
water.  It  Is  believed  there  were  shops 
or  tabernse  on  the  first  floor,  probably 
bakeries  where  grain  was  ground  and 
bread  sold  cheaply.  At  times  an  immense 


24  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

multitude,  estimated  to  have  numbered 
several  hundred  thousand,  received  free 
grain  from  the  government,  for  it  was  a 
favourite  way  among  the  ancients,  just  as 
It  is  at  present,  to  allay  the  discontent 
of  the  mob  through  the  stomach.  The 
free  workers  in  leather,  shoemaklng, 
clothing  and  other  trades  had  guilds, 
perhaps  somewhat  after  the  manner  of 
the  Trade  Unions,  but  there  Is  no  evi- 
dence that  this  free  labour  ever  com- 
plained of  the  competition  of  slave  la- 
bour. 

With  the  Romans,  conquest  and  terri- 
torial aggrandizement  were  national  pas- 
sions and  in  the  train  of  the  legions  fol- 
lowed the  merchant  and  trader.  The  Ro- 
man genius  for  road  building  made  the 
empire  a  network  of  magnificent  high- 
ways and  colonies  planted  at  points  de- 
termined with  a  masterly  grasp  of  stra- 
tegical valuations,  Romanized  the  prov- 
inces and  gradually  turned  the  barbari- 
ans into  Latin-speaking  Roman  citizens, 
proud  of  the  common  empire  whose  ex- 
pansion they  had  formerly  resisted  with 
Immense  loss  of  life  and  resultant  slav- 
ery. 

From  such  a  system  it  was  natural 
that  commerce  should  spring,  and  into 
the  nature  of  this  business  scholars  are 
now  inauirlng  with  such  zeal  and  suc- 
cess that  one  need  not  have  much  im- 
agination to  conjure  up  some  sort  of  a 
picture  of  the  teeming  Roman  world. 

Let  us  take  an  imaginary  journey  back 
to  Rome  along  the  road  of  yesterday  un- 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  25 

der  the  guidance  of  Fowler,  Abbott's 
"Common  People  of  Ancient  Rome," 
Herberman's  "Business  Life  in  Ancient 
Rome,"  Gibbon  and  Ferrero.  We  see  the 
shops  along  the  streets  with  signs  and 
window  dressing  not  unlike  the  system 
in  vogue  in  our  day.  A  string  of  hams 
In  front  of  a  shop  indicates  the  provi- 
sion store.  There  are  restaurants  and 
inns  everywhere,  but  no  chairs  at  table, 
for  the  Roman  dined  while  lounging  or 
reclining. 

The  street  hawker  we  find  as  great  a 
nuisance  as  he  is  today,  finally  becoming 
the  subject  of  state  regulation.  The  trav- 
elling cook  with  apparatus  set  up  in  the 
street  sells  his  steaming  sausages,  as  his 
latter  day  brother  sells  the  hot  frank- 
furter. 

Our  modern  merchant  would  not  care 
for  Roman  streets;  raised  stones  set  at 
intervals  from  side  to  side  interfered 
with  the  rapid  transit  of  drays  and 
doubtless  came  in  for  condemnation 
from  many  an  ancient  board  of  trade. 
The  object  of  these  stones  was  to  Insure 
the  pedestrian  dry  passage  in  wet  wea- 
ther, for  to  the  Roman  overshoes  were 
unknown. 

We  find  great  storage  houses  and 
granaries  all  over  Rome,  and  a  thorough- 
ly organized  banking  system  that  lent 
money  and  undertook  the  capitalization 
of  all  sorts  of  industries,  public  works, 
shipping,  and  the  collecting  of  taxes,  al- 
ways farmed  out  to  the  highest  bidder. 
These   bankers   and    money    lenders   had 


26  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

their  agents  throughout  the  empire. 
There  was  a  well  organized  postal  ser- 
vice with  the  mail  deliveries  expedited  by 
relays  of  swift  horses.  Intelligence  of 
state  and  distant  happenings  was  made 
known  by  means  of  that  ancient  proto- 
type of  the  newspaper,  the  Acta  Diurna 
Romani  Populi  (Daily  Acts  of  the  Roman 
People),  a  news  service  in  Caesar's  time 
posted  at  Important  points,  something 
after  the  manner  of  a  modern  newspa- 
per's bulletin  board.  The  news  was 
brought  in  by  couriers,  constituting  a 
kind  of  pony  express. 

Let  us  mingle  with  the  crowds  about 
the  "Acta."  We  are  surprised  at  the  ab- 
sence of  classic  Latin  speech  and  the 
prevalence  of  colloquialisms  bearing  a 
strange  resemblance  to  our  slang,  with 
ancient  equivalents  of  "Do  you  catch 
on?"   "Gave   the   old  man  a  touch,"   etc. 

The  Roman,  no  matter  how  careless 
his  manner  of  life,  was  a  stickler  for  a 
fine  funeral  and  everywhere  we  find 
burial  associations.  There  was  a  great 
deal  of  private  philanthropy  as  there 
is  with  us,  for  Rome  had  its  Rockefellers 
and  Carnegies,  but  no  state  provision  for 
old  age,  no  workhouses  for  the  indigent 
poor,  no  hospitals  to  relieve  the  suffer- 
ing. 

Property  was  held  at  private  risk,  for 
there  was  no  system  of  Insurance,  yet 
arson   was   common   and   men   often    de- 

istroyed  their  own  homes.  It  was  the  cus- 
tom of  the  Roman  after  a  fire  to  give 
the  victim  goods  and  money,  and  often 


DENNia  HATHNAUOHT  27 

such  private  contributions  amounted  to 
more  than  the  loss.  This  might  be  re- 
garded as  a  species  of  insurance  and  ex- 
plains the  temptation  "to  make  a  Are** 
which  is  still  common  in  the  modern 
world. 

We  discover  in  ancient  trade  combina- 
tions the  ancestor  of  the  octopus  or  mod- 
ern trust.  Manufacturing  was  largely- 
carried  on  under  the  domestic  system, 
the  workers,  free  or  slave,  being  em- 
ployed at  home  rather  than  gathered  in 
great  factories  as  with  us.  The  minute 
sub-division  of  labour  is  traceable  to  the 
Roman  passion  for  system,  efficiency  and 
organization.  There  were  not  only  250  dif- 
ferent divisions  of  slaves,  but  free  la- 
bour was  organized  according  to  the  hand- 
icraft of  the  worker.  These  guilds  of 
free  workmen,  so  far  as  research  goes  to 
show,  did  not  combine  to  raise  wages  and 
lower  working  hours,  but  to  gain  through 
the  fraternal  spirit  comradeship  and  im- 
proved social  life.  The  guilds  had  their 
rituals,  and  their  officers  and  insignia 
were  patterned  after  the  titles  and  insig- 
nia of  the  Roman  government  officials. 

In  the  next  chapter  we  shall  deal  spe- 
cifically with  the  question  of  slavery,  the 
most  important  of  all,  for  the  brunt  of 
Rome's  industrial  battle  fell  to  the  lot  of 
the  empire's  beasts  of  burden,  the  unre- 
(tulted  toilers. 


CHAPTER    III. 

DENNIS'    IRON    COLLAR^'SERTUS 
SUM." 

In  the  preceding  chapter  it  has  been 
shown  that  the  tribe  of  Hathnaught  was 
very  numerous  in  the  Roman  World.  In 
time,  the  tribe  became  distinguished  by 
a  peculiar  mark  of  ignobility — an  iron 
collar  worn  about  the  neck  on  which 
was  the  inscription — "Servus  Sum" — I 
am  a  slave.  Added  to  this  was  the  name 
of  the  gentleman  or  lady  that  revelled 
In  luxury  at  the  expense  of  the  un- 
requited toil  of  the  Hathnaughts.  The 
tribe  worked  from  daylight  to  darkness, 
faring  on  scant  rations  and  always  liable 
to  the  most  horrible  punishments  and 
chastisements.  Mere  whim  at  any  time 
could  send  a  slave  to  the  torture  cham- 
ber. He  could  not  give  testimony  in  a 
Court  of  law  except  under  the  torture. 
When  his  master  offered  him  as  a  wit- 
ness, he  was  put  to  "the  question"  and  it 
often  resulted  in  death. 

Juvenal,  greatest  of  all  the  satirists 
that  the  world  has  ever  known,  tells  us 
that  some  of  the  grand  Roman  dames 
used  to  keep  paid  torturers  and  that 
while  their  hair  was  being  dressed,  they 

2S 


DENNIS  H AT HN AUGHT  29 

amused  themselves  listening  to  the  sound 
of  the  lash  and  the  cries  of  the  poor 
victims  who  had  been  stripped  for  pun- 
ishment so  that  a  degenerate  yearning 
to  witness  human  suffering  might  be 
satisfied. 

Gibbon  in  his  "Decline  and  Pall  of  the 
Roman  Empire"  has  many  pictures 
drawn  from  the  annals  of  the  House  of 
Hathnaught,  but  Gibbon  lacked  the 
sublime  indignation  that  surged  in  the 
Juvenalian  soul,  and  his  words  lack  the 
passion  of  resentment. 

In  the  camp  of  Lucullus,  he  tells  us, 
an  ox  sold  for  a  drachma,  a  Hathnaught 
for  four  drachmas  or  about  three  shil- 
lings. "The  slaves,"  he  says,  "consisted 
for  the  most  part  of  barbarian  captives, 
taken  in  thousands  by  the  chances  of 
war,  purchased  at  a  vile  price  (just 
quoted),  accustomed  to  a  life  of  indepen- 
dence, and  impatient  to  break  and  to 
avenge  their  fetters." 

It  was  long  before  the  protection  of 
the  law  was  extended  to  the  slaves  and 
mitigated,  in  a  measure,  the  severity  of 
the  masters,  but  manumission  was  not 
encouraged  too  freely  even  in  the  best 
of  times,  through  the  fear  that  newly  ac- 
quired freedom  for  multitudes  of  bond- 
men might  set  loose  a  dangerous  element 
that  was  bound  to  the  empire  by  no  tie 
of  blood,  kinship,  or  nationality. 

Freedmen,  Gibbon  says,  were  excluded 
from  civil  or  military  honours,  and  the 
stigma  of  servile  origin  clung  to  them 
for  three  or  four  generations.     Many  of 


30  DENNIS  HATHNAUOHT 

the  slaves  were  men  of  learning — physi- 
cians and  philosophers — and  often  a  noble 
Roman  possessed  hundreds  or  even  thou- 
sands of  bondmen.  That  their  lives  were 
lightly  valued  is  shown  by  the  story  of 
Pedanius  Secundus.  The  four  hundred 
slaves  under  his  roof  were  all  put  to 
death  for  not  preventing-  his  murder. 

Almost  every  profession,  either  liberal 
or  mechanical,  might  be  found  in  the 
household  of  an  opulent  Senator,  Gibbon 
says,  and  in  the  International  Encyclo- 
pedia we  find  it  stated  that  in  Rome  there 
were  as  many  as  two  hundred  and  fifty 
different  classes  of  slaves.  Public  slaves 
were  the  property  of  the  State,  and  were 
engaged  in  road  building  and  other  pub- 
lic works.  The  private  slaves,  we  read 
in  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  were  di- 
vided into  two  kinds — familia  rustica  or 
rural,  and  familia  urbana  or  domestic. 
Over  the  rural  slaves  was  the  villicus, 
a  chief  slave  or  overseer.  They  worked 
in  chain  gangs,  and  at  night,  according 
to  Wallon's  "History  of  Slavery,"  were 
confined  in  the  ergastulum  or  under- 
ground slave  prison. 

According  to  Gibbon  the  Hathnaughts 
were  at  least  equal  in  number  to  the  free 
inhabitants  of  the  Roman  world. 

An  historian  of  our  own  times,  Gugliel- 
mo  Ferrero,  goes  deeper  than  Gibbon  into 
the  origin  of  the  Roman  slave  trade — 
the  exploitation  of  members  of  the  tribe 
of  Hathnaught  for  the  enrichment  of  pre- 
Christian  seigniors.  It  is  the  opinion  of  Fer- 
rero    (Greatness  and   Decline   of   Rome) 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  31 

that  this  trade  had  its  beginning  in  the 
scarcity  of  the  old  free  labour  and  the 
disinclination  of  free  workmen  to  engage 
in  tasks  that  promised  a  bare  living  and 
no  assured  future  of  Improved  personal 
conditions. 

Lester  F.  Ward,  author  of  "Pure  So- 
ciology," appears  to  have  had  a  similar 
thought  in  mind  when,  noting  the  disin- 
clination of  the  Hathnaughts  to  labour,  he 
says:  "How  did  man  learn  to  work?  Did 
the  needs  of  existence  teach  him  self- 
denial,  tone  down  his  wild,  unsettled  na- 
ture, and  discipline  his  mind  and  body  to 
daily  toil?  Not  at  all.  It  is  safe  to  say 
that  if  left  wholly  to  these  influences  man 
would  have  never  learned  to  labour.  It 
required  some  other  influence  far  more 
imperative  and  coercive.  In  a  word, 
nothing  short  of  slavery  could  ever  have 
accomplished  this.  This  was  the  social 
mission  of  human  slavery — to  convert 
mere  activity  into  true  labour." 

Whatever  the  cause,  Perrero  shows 
that  in  the  second  century  before  Christ 
there  was  established  in  Rome  a  vast  and 
systematized  traffic  in  the  flesh  of  the 
Hathnaughts.  Traders  followed  the  ar- 
mies and  bought  the  prisoners  who  were 
promptly  resold  to  the  best  advantage  to 
their  masters.  Kings  of  Numidia  and 
Mauritania  even  sold  their  own  subjects 
in  their  eagerness  for  gain.  Caravans  of 
slaves  poured  into  Rome  from  Gaul,  Ger- 
many, and  the  East.  The  Hathnaughts 
were  sold  without  regard  to  their  feelings 
or   family   ties,   wherever   it   pleased   the 


32  DENNIS   HATHNAUGHT 

dealers  to  send  them.  All  that  was  ex- 
pected of  them  was  submission  and  la- 
bour. In  some  instances  those  that  show- 
ed special  aptitude  were  educated  in  va- 
rious arts  and  were  even  made  proficient 
with  the  sword  with  a  view  of  being  hired 
out  by  their  masters  as  gladiators  at 
great  funerals. 

In  "Quo  Vadis,"  "Fabiola,"  and  like 
books  we  get  fine  pictures  of  the  slaves 
— pictures  that  are  redolent  of  the  life 
of  antiquity.  We  see  the  unpaid  and  ill- 
treated  Hathnaughts  dancing  attendance 
on  the  great  whom  some  one  has  esti- 
mated to  number  not  more  than  thirty 
thousand  in  an  empire  teeming  with  mil- 
lions of  humankind.  We  find  Dennis  and 
his  wife  and  children  attending  their  mas- 
ters and  mistresses  at  the  toilet,  in  the 
bath,  at  the  table,  and  in  the  kitchen. 
They  had  to  furnish  the  idlers  with 
amusement  and  entertainment,  no  matter 
how  heavy  of  heart  they  might  be. 
When  the  great  ventured  abroad,  the 
handsomest  of  the  tribe  of  Hathnaught 
attended  them.  Dennis  had  no  day  off 
and  no  vacation.  Perquisites  he  picked 
up  here  and  there  were  called  his  "pecu- 
lium"  and  often  these  tips  formed  the 
nucleus  of  the  fund  that  eventually  pur- 
chased his  freedom. 

To  the  everlasting  credit  of  the  tribe, 
be  it  said,  they  were  not  altogether  con- 
tented to  wear  the  collar  of  servitude. 
One  of  the  house,  Spartacus  Hathnaught, 
roused  the  en.slaved  population  in  73  B.  C. 
and  engaged  In  a  great  servile  insurrec- 


DENNIS   HATHNAUOHT  33 

tion  which  was  successfully  waged  by  the 
slaves  armed  with  all  sorts  of  weapons, 
until  the  superior  discipline  and  resoui'ces 
of  the  Romans  conquered.  With  the 
death  of  Spartacus,  the  Hathnaughts'  in- 
surrection was  at  an  end  and  the  tribe 
resumed  its   shackles. 

These  shackles  were  not  broken  until 
Christianity  became  firmly  established  in 
the  empire  which  soon  afterward  fell,  and 
slavery  was  replaced  by  that  later  form 
of  servitude  known  as  the  feudal  system. 
By  that  time  the  rural  slaves  of  Rome 
had  become  merged  in  the  class  of  the 
coloni.  The  colonus  in  the  old  days  of 
Rome  was  a  freeman  who  worked  a  farm 
sometimes  under  lease  and  sometimes 
under  a  form  of  metayage. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

THE    WORLD'S    MIDNIGHT— HATH- 
NAUGHT  AS  SEEF. 

Knowledge  of  the  history  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  is  necessary  if  we  would  trace  in 
order,  the  annals  of  the  house  of  Hath- 
naught.  Edward  Everett  rightly  called 
the  period,   "the  midnight  of  the  world." 

Victor  Duruy's  sweeping  view  has  the 
advantage  of  brevity.  Particularly  good 
is  his  account  of  feudalism.  William 
Robertson  has  viewed  the  period  in  an 
introductory  volume  to  his  "History  of 
Charles,  the  Fifth,"  and  Henry  Hallam's 
work  on  the  subject  is  still  widely  read 
and  studied,  although  later  research  has 
led  scholars  to  question  certain  of  his 
conclusions  and  to  bring  the  charge  of 
inaccuracy  against  him.  No  one,  how- 
ever, has  ever  impugned  his  sincerity  or 
charged  him  with  partiality — the  curse 
of  the  special  advocate  In  historical 
writing. 

J.  P.  C.  Hecker's  "Epidemics  of  the 
Middle  Ages,"  a  German  work  of  which 
there  is  a  translation  by  B.  C.  Babington, 
contains  a  mass  of  matter  about  "The 
Black  Death"  of  the  fourteenth  century 
and  that  mysterious  scourge  of  the  race, 

34 


DENNIS   H AT HN AUGHT  35 

"the  Sweating  Sickness"  which  came  in 
five  successive  periods,  the  last  in  1551. 
The  "Black  Death"  swept  away  25,- 
000,000  of  Europe's  inhabitants  and  it 
is  said  that  in  one  cemetery  near  Lon- 
don,  50,000  bodies  were  buried. 

The  world's  midnight  began  in  476 
A.  D.  when  the  triumph  of  Odoacer  in 
Italy  put  an  end  to  the  Roman  Empire. 
It  lasted  until  the  Turks  took  Constan- 
tinople in  1453  and  the  Ottoman  power 
supplanted  that  of  the  Eastern  empire. 
The  Dark  Ages,  when  intellect  was  in 
eclipse,  are  usually  held  to  include  the 
period  from  the  time  of  Odoacer  until  the 
thirteenth  century  when  there  was  such 
a  notable  revival  of  intellectual  activity 
along  all  lines  that  Dr.  James  Walsh 
has  characterized  it  as  the  greatest  of 
the  centuries. 

The  Middle  Ages,  so  far  as  the  mass  of 
the  people  counted,  constituted  one 
thousand  years  of  darkness,  crime, 
degradation,  superstition  and  injustice. 
Here  and  there  a  scholar,  usually  a 
monk,  kept  the  candle  of  progress  burn- 
ing while  he  busied  himself  with  re- 
search, experiment,  or  the  copying  of 
manuscripts,  but  the  ruling  powers,  the 
nobility  and  churchmen,  cared  little  .save 
for  the  perpetuation  of  their  own  power. 

The  church  opposed  the  feudal  sys- 
tem, not  because  it  oppressed  the  serfs, 
but  because  it  divided  the  serf's  allegiance 
and  deprived  the  ecclesiastical  power  of 
supreme  domination  by  making  the  serf 
directly  dependent  upon  his  overlord. 


3(5  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

Feudalism,  according  to  Duruy,  was 
first  recognized  by  the  edict  of  Kierry- 
sur-Oise  (877)  whereby  Charles  the  Bald 
recognized  the  right  of  a  son  to  inherit 
the  fief  or  the  office  of  his  father. 

Under  the  feudal  system  everybody 
became  somebody's  man.  The  great 
seignior  was  the  vassal  of  the  king;  the 
seigniors  in  turn  parcelled  out  the  land 
to  their  own  vassals  in  return  for  mili- 
tary and  other  services.  The  vassal  was 
obliged  to  enroll  for  war  under  his  lord 
and  to  supply  him  with  money — first  to 
ransom  him  in  the  event  of  captivity; 
second  to  defray  the  expenses  incident  to 
the  knighting  of  the  seignior's  or  lord's 
eldest  son;  third,  to  provide  a  dowry  for 
the  lord's  daughter.  These  contributions 
were  called  aides.  The  vassal  did  homage 
to  his  lord  and  through  an  act  of  hom- 
age, sons  of  vassals  on  the  death  of  their 
fathers,  received  in  turn  their  lands  from 
feudal  lords.  Often  there  was  a  symbolic 
offering  from  vassal  to  lord,  of  a  sod  or 
other  trifle  in  acknowledgment  of  his 
overlordship. 

There  was  a  marked  difference  between 
the  feudalism  of  France  and  that  which 
obtained  in  England.  In  France  subin- 
feudation was  practiced  to  such  an  ex- 
tent that,  as  Buckle  remarks,  oppression 
became  an  organized  system.  The  vassal 
who  held  his  land  from  the  overlord, 
let  It  out  to  others  responsible  to  him- 
self, while  these  In  turn  subdivided  the 
land  until  the  lowest  man  had  masters 


I 


DENNIS   HATHNAUGHT  37 

running  back  by  the  score.  In  England, 
in  the  time  of  the  first  Edward,  the 
statute  known  as  Quia  Emptors  for- 
bade subinfeudation  and  lessened  the  load 
of  the  Hathnaughts.  To  this  day  in 
France  the  effect  of  subinfeudation  is 
seen  in  the  intensive  agriculture  of  the 
peasantry  on  small  plots  of  ground. 

The  mass  of  the  population  during  the 
Middle  Ages,  were  serfs  attached  to 
their  particular  estate  or  glebe  without 
hope  of  emancipation  and  debarred  by 
cruel  penalties  from  ever  leaving  it. 
Lords  through  their  bailiffs  and  serf- 
inasters  held  the  Hathnaughts  in  check 
and  were  at  liberty  to  treat  them  as  they 
pleased,  and  more  often  than  not  it 
pleased  them  to  submit  them  to  outrage 
and   cruel    exactions. 

If  a  girl  serf  happened  to  be  pretty 
she  was  at  the  mercy  of  her  master 
without  right  of  appeal  or  redress,  and  if 
she  were  to  marry,  her  lord  could  at  will 
take  the  bridegroom's  place  the  first 
night.  This  was  called  the  "right  of 
first  fruits",  "Droit  du  Seignior",  or  "Jus 
primae  Noctis"  (law  of  the  first  night), 
and  is  described  with  terrible  realism  in 
Eugene  Sue's  "Mysteries  of  the  People." 
The  law  is  also  worked  into  the  plot  of 
Beaumarchais'   comedy   of   Figaro. 

The  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  (11th 
edition),  says  there  is  no  trustworthy 
evidence  that  the  law  ever  had  official 
sanction  but  admits  that  lawless  barons 
vei-y  likely  enforced  it.  John  Lothrop 
Motley    (Rise    of    the    Dutch    Republic), 


462375 


38  DENNIS   HATHN AUGHT 

holds  that  there  was  such  a  law,  which 
led  Bismarck  to  take  issue  with  him, 
contending  that  it  was  only  a  tax  or 
money  payment  exacted  by  the  lord 
from    the   bridegroom. 

The  history  of  the  Hathnaughts  in  the 
Middle  Ages  is  realistically  pictured  by 
Eugene  Bonnemere,  in  his  "Histoire  des 
Paysans."  He  deals  primarily  with  the 
period  between  1200  and  1850,  but  in  an 
introduction  he  traces  the  history  from 
50  B.  C.  to  1200  A.  D.  In  telling  the 
painful  story  of  the  French  Hathnaughts 
Bonnemere  considers  his  relation  to  the 
nobility  and  the  king  and  the  means 
whereby  an  arrogant  nobility  was  able 
to  reduce  the  French  peasants  to  a  state 
of  serfdom,  worse  than  obtained  in  any 
other   country. 

Like  Buckle  and  other  authorities  he 
shows  that  in  England  to  win  over  the 
common  people  to  their  cause,  the  nobil- 
ity had  to  make  concessions  to  Dennis 
and  let  him  share  in  a  measure,  privil- 
leges  the  great  lords  had  obtained  from 
the  king.  In  France  the  nobles  were 
more  powerful  and  could  afford  to  dis- 
dain Dennis,  who  year  by  year  descended 
more  and  more  into  the  scale  of  serfdom 
while  in  England  the  people  were  gain- 
ing slowly,  but  surely,  point  after  point, 
and  gradually  building  up  that  glorious 
unwritten  charter,  the  British  Consti- 
tution. 

Magna  Charta  was  wrested  from  IClng 
John  at  Runnymede  in  June,  1215,  and 
greatly     extended     popular     rights     and 


DENNIS  IIATHNAVOHT  39 

privileges.  In  1264  English  cities  were 
returning  members  to  Parliament  and 
the  House  of  Commons  came  into  exist- 
ence and  began  that  fight  with  Privi- 
lege that  has  only  ended  in  our  day 
by  the  Commons  winning  supremacy 
over  the  House  of  Lords. 

Feudalism  like  slavery  had  its  useful 
as  well  as  its  dark  side.  It  established 
authority  and  built  up  population  by 
fixing  man  in  a  set  abode.  But  the 
authority  being  irresponsible,  became  a 
tyranny  that  proved  its  own  undoing  and 
eventually  led  to  its  fall. 

To  the  Middle  Ages  we  owe  other  re- 
markable institutions — Monasticism,  the 
Crusades,   Chivalry,   and   trial   by   ordeal. 

Monasticism  had  its  origin  in  the  de- 
sire of  the  soul-weary  to  find  a  refuge 
from  a  world  full  of  injustice  and  tur- 
moil. In  the  seclusion  of  the  monasteries 
the  monks  copied  and  illuminated  manu- 
scripts, thus  saving  to  mankind  the 
priceless  gift  of  learning,  particularly  of 
classical  Greek  and  Roman  literature. 
Out  of  the  monastic  school  often  de- 
veloped the  University.  Monastic  ex- 
ample improved  farming  methods  and 
by  dignifying  manual  labour,  taught  re- 
spect for  work. 

Monks  were  not  only  the  manufactur- 
ers and  educators,  but  took  care  of  the 
sick  and  orphans  and  developed  the 
idea  of  service  that  we  see  to-day  in 
our  great  hospitals.  The  abuse  of  the 
monastic  life  was  that  it  withdrew  the 
best  men  and  women  from  a  world  that 
could   illy    spare    them. 


40  DENNIS   HATHNAUOHT 

It  was  a  monk,  Peter,  the  Hermit, 
whose  preaching-  brought  on  the  Cru- 
sades, movemeuts  that  dispatched  im- 
mense numbers  to  the  East  to  rescue  the 
Holy  Sepulcher  from  the  Saracenic  In- 
fidels, and  which  are  often  described  as 
outbursts  of  ignorant  and  fanatical  zeal. 
Yet  we  must  not  overlook  certain  im- 
portant and  enduring  effects  of  these 
wildly  romantic  expeditions.  They 
weakened  feudalism  in  its  backbone  by 
luring  serfs  from  the  soil;  they  opened 
up  new  avenues  of  commerce  and  last- 
ly, by  disturbing  the  flow  of  culture  at 
its  eastern  fountain  head  in  Constanti- 
nople, caused  many  artists  to  immigrate 
to  Italy  and  Germany  and  thus  sent  a 
shaft  of  light  through  the  Dark  Ages. 

Chivalry  had  its  origin  in  the  Cru- 
sades and  in  the  romantic  literature  that 
this  coming  together  of  the  West  and 
the  East  brought  into  existence.  It  was 
the  old  Germanic  idea  of  the  sacredness 
of  womanhood,  described  by  Tacitus, 
brought  to  full  flower  by  the  new  mili- 
tary order  of  knighthood.  Only  those 
of  noble  birth  might  aspire  to  be  knights, 
and  the  candidate  for  knightly  honours 
was  invested  with  his  rank  only  after  a 
ceremonial  that  Included  fasting  and 
prayer,  the  vigil  over  his  arms,  and 
vows  to  uphold  ideals  of  honour  and  hu- 
manity. He  always  selected  a  lady, 
often  Imaginary,  as  his  ideal,  and  roamed 
the  world  in  quest  of  adventure.  The 
joust  and  tournament  were  the  favourite 
pastimes  and  he  put  all  the  more  ardour 


DENNI8  HAT  UN  AUGHT  41 

into  his  work  from  the  fact  that  his 
lady  love  was  a  spectator.  To  Chivalry- 
is  traced  the  origin  of  duelling. 

Despite  the  romance  that  has  made 
the  Age  of  Chivalry  glow  with  life  and 
beauty,  we  are  too  often  disillusioned  by 
instances  of  wife-beating  and  injustice 
on  the  part  of  knights,  and  Cervantes 
may  be  said  to  have  put  the  world  for- 
ever in  his  debt  by  destroying  the  in- 
stitution through  Don  Quixote. 

Perhaps  the  most  terrible  of  all  pecu- 
liarities of  the  Middle  Ages  was  the 
method  of  punishment.  In  H.  C.  Lea's 
"History  of  the  Inquisition"  we  are  told 
that  the  "wheel,  the  cauldron  of  boil- 
ing oil,  burning  alive,  burying  alive, 
flaying  alive,  tearing  apart  with  wild 
horses,  were  the  ordinary  expedients  by 
which  the  criminal  jurist  sought  to  de- 
ter crime  by  frightful  examples  which 
would  make  a  profound  impression  on 
a  not  over-sensitive  population." 

Trial  by  ordeal  proves  the  amazing 
prevalence  of  superstition  and  ignorance. 
The  usual  forms  such  trials  took  were 
the  ordeals  of  fire,  water,  and  personal 
combat.  A  person  accused  might  be 
blindfolded  and  forced  to  walk  between 
two  fires.  If  only  scorched  in  slight  de- 
gree it  was  held  that  innocence  was 
established.  Again  an  accused  person 
might  be  required  to  walk  barefooted  on 
red  hot  iron  and  if  no  burning  resulted, 
innocence  was  miraculously  proved.  In 
the  "Lives  of  the  Saints,"  you  may  read 
of  a  pious  royal  lady  who,  without  ra4sing 


42  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

so  much  as  a  blister,  walked  upon  red 
hot  ploughshares.  But  the  miracle  never 
happened.  If  it  did,  precautions  were 
taken  to  protect  the  lady's  feet.  It  is 
a  story   for  the  marines. 

The  water  cure  for  crimes  took  various 
forms.  If  the  accused,  thrown  into 
water,  sank,  he  was  supposed  to  be  in- 
nocent, for  the  act  of  floating  was  In- 
terpreted to  mean  that  the  water  wished 
to  eject  the  guilty,  sin-red  individual. 
Persons  accused  of  witchcraft  were  sub- 
jected to  this  test.  In  the  ordeal  of  hot 
water,  the  accused  was  required  to  take 
a  stone  out  of  a  boiling  cauldron.  In 
some  cases  one  had  to  plunge  the  arm 
as  far  as  the  elbow  in  the  boiling  water. 
If  the  hand  and  arm  readily  healed  it 
was  proof  of  innocence. 

In  the  ordeal  Qf  personal  combat  or  the 
wager  of  battle,  the  challenger  stood 
facing  the  west,  the  person  challenged 
the  east.  Defeat  of  the  challenged  party 
meant  innocence  of  the  accused.  In 
case  the  vanquished  begged  for  life  he 
was  often  granted  his  wish,  upon  re- 
tracting his  accusation,  and  thereafter 
was  known  as  a  recreant. 

Trial  by  ordeal  is  found  to  be  common 
up  to  the  thirteenth  century  and  rarer 
from  that  time  on,  as  more  enlightened 
councils  prevailed  and  saner  ideas  of 
jurisprudence  were  established.  Among 
primitive  peoples  It  persists  to  our  day, 
particularly  in  Africa  as  we  know  on 
the   strength   of  testimony   submitted   by 


DENNIS  H AT HN AUGHT  43 

the  great  missionary,  David  Livingstone. 

"But  did  the  Middle  Ages  wholly  die?" 
asks  Duruy,  who  answers  his  own  ques- 
tion: "They  bequeathed  to  Modern  Times 
virile  maxims  of  public  and  individual 
rig^hts,  which  then  profited  only  the 
lords,  but  which  now  profit  all.  The 
Middle  Ages  developed  chivalrous  ideas, 
a  sentiment  of  honour,  a  respect  for 
woman  which  still  stamp  with  a  peculiar 
seal  those  who  preserve  and  practice 
them.  Lastly,  mediseval  architecture  re- 
mains the  most  imposing  material  mani- 
festation of  the  religious  sentiment,  an 
architecture  we  can  only  copy  when  we 
wish  to  erect  the  fittest  houses  of 
prayer." 

Duruy  might  have  added  that  in  these 
so-called  Dark  Ages  were  founded  most 
of  the  great  schools  and  universities  of 
Europe  and  that  to  these  times  we  owe 
many  great  discoveries  and  inventions  of 
which  the  most  glorious  were  the  dis- 
covery of  America  and  the  invention  of 
printing. 


CHAPTER    V. 

WHEN  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  WAS 
A  SAXON. 

In  the  days  of  the  Anglo-Saxons  there 
were,  throughout  England,  Village  Com- 
munities, conducted  under  the  Manorial 
system.  The  Lord  of  the  Manor  was 
the  great  man  of  the  community,  and 
lander  him  and  attached  to  the  soil  were 
the  freemen  and  villeins.  Villeins,  who 
were  of  the  tribe  of  Hathnaughts,  were 
in  a  state  of  serfdom,  bound  for  life  to 
the  estate  upon  which  they  were  born, 
and  under  obligations  to  the  Lord  of  the 
Manor  to  render  him  services  in  return 
for  his  protection  and  the  use  of  the 
land.  Mainly  the  services  consisted  in 
military  duties  and  agricultural  labour. 
There  was  little  to  recommend  the  con- 
dition of  the  Hathnaughts  in  Anglo- 
Saxon  days,  in  comparison  with  the  con- 
dition of  Sambo  Hathnaught,  the  black 
slave  of  Dixie.  The  Lord  of  the  Manor 
earned  his  luxuries  in  the  sweat  of  his 
serf's  face,  and  the  Anglo-Saxon  Dennis 
always  laboured  in  fear  of  the  lash.  As 
the  serf  of  that  day  was  called  Nativus 
it  is  believed  by  some  authorities  that 
the  mass  of  the  subjugated  people  were 
of  the  displaced  Celtic  race. 

44 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  45 

England  as  it  was  then,  was  divided 
into  shires;  these  again  were  divided  into 
smaller  districts  called  hundreds  and 
these  hundreds  into  still  smaller  sub-di- 
visions called  tithings. 

Hallam  in  his  "Middle  Ages,"  discussing 
Anglo-Saxon  times  in  England  says: 
"There  were  but  two  denominations  of 
persons  above  the  class  of  servitude, 
thanes  and  ceorls;  the  owners  and  the 
cultivators  of  land,  or  rather,  perhaps, 
as  a  more  accurate  distinction,  the  gen- 
try and  the  inferior  people.  Among  all 
the  Northern  Nations  as  is  well  known, 
the  weregild  or  composition  for  murder, 
was  the  standard  measure  of  the  grada- 
tion of  society.  In  the  Anglo-Saxon 
laws,  we  find  two  ranks  of  freeholders; 
the  first  called  King's  thanes  whose  lives 
were  valued  at  1200  shillings;  the  sec- 
ond of  inferior  degree,  whose  composi- 
tion was  half  that  sum.  That  of  a  ceorl 
was  200  shillings.  By  the  laws  of  Wil- 
liam the  Conqueror  there  was  still  a 
composition  fixed  for  the  murder  of  a 
villein  or  ceorl,  the  strongest  proof  of 
his  being,  as  it  was  called  law-worthy, 
and  possessing  a  rank  however  subordi- 
nate in  political  society.  And  this  com- 
position was  due  to  his  kindred,  not  to 
the  lord.  Indeed,  it  seems  positively  de- 
clared in  another  passage  that  the  cul- 
tivators though  bound  to  remain  upon 
the  land  were  only  subject  to  certain 
services.  Nobody  can  doubt  that  the 
villeinl  and  bordarii  of  Doomsday  Book, 
who   are   always   distinguished   from   the 


46  DENNIS   IIATHNAVOHT 

serfs  of  the  demesne,  were  the  ceorls  of 
Anglo-Saxon   law." 

To  possess  land  was  the  only  way  to 
power,  social  or  political.  It  is  believed 
that  to  each  hundred  warriors  among 
the  Saxons,  a  particular  portion  of  land 
was  allotted,  and  these  again  divided  the 
land  among  the  different  families.  Land 
that  remained  over  was  called  the  folk- 
land  and  the  king  could  not  grant  any 
of  this  away  without  permission  of  the 
Witanagemot.  Society  became  divided 
into  Hathnaughts  who  had  no  standing 
in  law  and  were  at  the  mercy  of  the 
master;  the  landless  freeman  who  placed 
himself  in  a  position  of  dependence  and 
thus  acquired  protection  under  the  law; 
the  full  freeman  who  owned  land  and 
gauged  his  rank  according  to  the  num- 
ber of  hides  of  land  he  owned.  The  ceorl 
owned  one  hide,  the  thegn  or  thane,  five, 
and  the  earl,  forty  hides.  These  last 
classes  were  on  something  of  an  equal 
footing  and  one  might  pass  from  one  to 
the  other  with  growing  wealth. 

To  Anglo-Saxon  days  are  traced  those 
beginnings  of  constitutional  and  ordered 
government  now  so  general  throughout 
the  world.  Towns  grew  by  the  acciden- 
tal fact  of  the  proximity  of  farms  and 
an  official  called  the  reeve,  attended  by 
four  townsmen  represented  a  township's 
interests  in  the  courts  of  the  Hundred 
and  the  Shire.  The  Hundred  was  a  com- 
bination of  towns,  the  gemot  or  court 
of  the  hundred  held  monthly  sessions, 
and    these    were    attended    by    the    lords 


DENNIS  JIATHNAUGHT  47 

of  the  domains  included  in  the  hundred; 
the  reeves  and  their  four  men;  and  the 
priest   of  the   parish. 

Criminals  were  tried  in  the  Courts  of 
the  Hundred  and  land  and  other  ques- 
tions decided,  usually  by  twelve  men 
chosen  from  representatives  at  the  Court. 
Matters  always  had  to  take  orderly  proce- 
dure and  it  was  not  legal  to  hear  ques- 
tions in  superior  courts  until  they  had 
first  been  heard  in  the  Court  of  the  Hun- 
dred. An  aggregation  of  Hundreds  made 
up  the  Shire  of  which  the  great  man  was 
the  earldorman  whose  office  became 
hereditary  and  who  later  became  known 
by  the  title  of  earl.  The  king  was  rep- 
resented in  the  Shire  by  the  sheriff,  who 
convoked,  semi-annually,  the  Shire-moot, 
or  court  above  the  Hundred,  and  pre- 
sided over  its  deliberations,  with  the 
earldorman  and  bishop  sitting  with  him. 

Supreme  over  all  was  the  great  coun- 
cil of  the  nation,  the  Witanagemot.  This 
must  not  be  confounded  with  present 
representative  bodies  called  Parliament 
and  Congress.  Its  membership  was  made 
up  of  the  earldormen,  bishops,  abbots 
and  thanes.  The  Witanagemot  was  not 
only  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  world,  but  it  had  the  power  of 
electing  the  king  and  promulgating  laws. 
The  power  of  the  Witanagemot  was  of 
a  more  or  less  fluctuating  character  for 
a  king  who  was  a  real  king  and  not  a 
mere  figurehead  could  always  bring  the 
Witanagemot  to  his  way  of  thinking  and 
doing. 


48  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

Kingly  power  was  largely  increased  by 
making  the  interests  of  members  of  his 
household  identical  with  those  of  royalty. 
Gesiths  or  companions  of  the  king  form- 
ed a  sort  of  Swiss  Guard  of  royalty,  but 
the  gesithcund  as  time  went  on  disap- 
peared into  the  general  body  of  thane- 
hood.  Thanes  became  powerful  through 
grants  of  land  from  the  king  and  often 
such  grants  carried  with  them  power  of 
sac  and  soc,  and  in  this  way,  the  right 
of  the  thane  to  decide  out  of  hand,  mat- 
ters that  in  earlier  days  were  submitted 
to  the  hundred-moot. 

Sac  and  soc  are  also  written  sake  and 
soke.  The  first  involved  a  cause  in  dis- 
pute between  litigants  and  the  right  to 
hold  court  and  administer  justice  with- 
in a  specified  district.  Under  the  Nor- 
mans such  power  was  vested  in  the 
Manorial  Courts.  The  system  in  one 
form  or  another  has  been  exercised  by 
the  Squirearchy  of  England  almost  to 
our  own  day.  Soc  or  soke  as  defined  by 
Webster,  concerned  "the  right  to  hold 
court  and  do  justice,  with  the  franchise 
to  receive  certain  fees  or  fines  arising 
from  it;  jurisdiction  over  a  certain  ter- 
ritory or  over  certain  men,  or  the  right 
to  exercise  such  jurisdiction  or  receive 
certain  fees  or  fines  belonging  to  that 
right  or  the  territory  over  which  the 
jurisdiction    exists." 

Although  the  king  reserved  to  himself 
the  right  of  soc  or  soke  over  thanes,  the 
tendency  of  the  system  was  to  increase 
more  and  more  the  power  of  the  thanes 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  49 

until  in  time  a  few  powerful  nobles  be- 
came a  menace  to  royalty  as  the  foun- 
tain head  of  a  central  authority.  In 
thanehood,  Green  (History  of  the  English 
People)  found  the  germ  of  feudalism. 
This  system  indeed  did  form  the  raw 
material  of  the  feudalism  introduced  so 
ruthlessly  by  Wilham  the  Conqueror, 
who,  with  his  Normans  conquered  Eng- 
land in   1066. 

Duruy  (History  of  the  Middle  Ages) 
with  his  usual  power  of  presenting  vivid 
pictures  of  olden  times  without  unnec- 
essary circumlocution  describes  the  man- 
ner in  which  William  divided  the  Saxon 
lands  among  his  followers. 

"The  secular  and  the  ecclesiastical  do- 
mains of  the  Saxons,"  he  says,  "were 
occupied  by  the  conquerors,  many  of 
whom  had  been  cowherds  or  weavers  or 
simple  priests  on  the  continent,  but  now 
became  lords  and  bishops.  Between  1080 
and  1086  a  register  of  all  the  properties 
occupied  was  drawn  up.  This  is  the  fa- 
mous land  roll  of  England  called  by  the 
Saxons  the  Doomsday  Book.  On  this  land 
thus  divided  was  established  the  most 
regular  feudal  system  in  Europe.  Six 
hundred  barons  had  beneath  them  60,- 
000  knights.  Over  all  towered  the  king, 
who  appropriated  1462  manors  and  the 
principal  cities  and  by  exacting  the  di- 
rect oath  from  even  the  humblest 
knights,  attached  every  vassal  closely  to 
himself." 

William  was  wise  in  his  day  and  gen- 
eration,   and    had    closely    observed,    not 


50  DENNIS   HATHNAUOHT 

only  the  lessening  of  the  royal  power  in 
France  in  consequence  of  the  rise  of 
great  feudatories,  but  the  gradual  de- 
velopment of  a  similar  system  in  Eng- 
land as  a  result  of  the  growth  of  thane- 
hood.  When  he  granted  one  of  his  lords 
a  vast  amount  of  land  he  took  pains  to 
see  that  the  tracts  were  in  widely  sep- 
arated districts,  and  in  this  way  foiled 
the  ambition  of  a  powerful  vassal  who 
might  seek  to  become  great  in  his  home 
Shire. 

When  England  was  harassed  by  the 
Danes,  the  Anglo-Saxons  were  subjected 
to  what  is  known  as  the  Danegeld,  a 
tribute  paid  to  the  piratic  Danes.  The 
tax  fell  upon  land  under  cultivation.  Wil- 
liam saw  fit  to  continue  this  tax,  and 
eighteen  years  after  the  Conquest  tripled 
it.  It  was  one  of  the  most  vexatious 
exactions  that  oppressed  the  Hath- 
naughts.  Another  of  his  oppressive  mea- 
sures was  to  take  over  jurisdiction  of 
the  forests,  and  to  visit  with  heavy  pen- 
alties, even  deprivation  of  sight  and  life, 
the  presumption  of  those  who  dared  to 
kill  game  therein.  This  right  belonged 
exclusively  to  himself  and  his  favourites. 

These  forest  laws  led  to  the  outlawry 
of  many  persons,  and  in  the  old  ballads 
and  tales  we  find  stories  of  the  hardy 
bands  that  defied  the  Norman  kings,  par- 
ticularly of  the  romantic  deeds  of  Robin 
Hood,  Little  John,  Maid  Marion  and 
others  who  found  refuge  in  Sherwood 
Forest  and  founded  in  the  greenwood 
and  the  brush,  the  outlaw  republic  of 
the  Hathnaughts. 


DENNIS   HATHNAUGHT  51 

Edward  Augustus  Freeman  (History  of 
the  Norman  Conquest  of  England)  writ- 
ing of  the  misfortunes  that  had  come 
upon  the  Anglo-Saxons  with  the  death 
of  their  King  Harold  at  the  Battle  of 
Hastings,  declares  that  from  that  day 
the  Normans  "began  to  work  the  will  of 
God  upon  the  folk  of  England  till  there 
were  left  in  England  no  chiefs  of  the 
land  of  English  blood,  till  all  were 
brought  down  to  bondage  and  sorrow,  till 
it  was  a  shame  to  be  called  an  English- 
man, and  the  men  of  England  were  no 
more  a  people." 

The  Normans  despoiled  the  Saxon 
Hathnaughts  of  everything  and  exploit- 
ed the  whole  land  for  the  conquering 
race.  No  more  interesting  picture  of  this 
contest  exists  in  literature  than  that 
drawn  by  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  the  first 
chapter  of  "Ivanhoe."  In  this  we  are 
carried  back  to  the  England  of  Richard 
the  First  and  in  the  talk  between  Wamba 
the  jester  and  Gurth,  the  swineherd,  we 
get  a  graphic  picture  of  the  times.  Gurth, 
who  is  of  the  house  of  Hathnaught,  bears 
about  his  neck  a  brass  band  welded  on 
and  with  the  inscription  upon  it:  "Gurth, 
the  son  of  Beowulph  is  the  born  thrall 
of  Cedric  of  Rotherwood."  Wamba  shows 
that  everything  worth  while  is  given  a 
Norman  name,  while  all  that  is  mean  re- 
mains Saxon. 

"Why,  how  call  you  these  grunting 
brutes  running  about  on  their  four  legs?" 
demanded   Wamba. 

"Swine,  fool,  swine,"  said  the  herd, 
"every  fool  knows  that." 


52  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

"And  swine  is  good  Saxon,"  said  the 
jester,  "but  how  call  you  the  sow  when 
she  is  flayed  and  drawn  and  quartered, 
and  hung  up  by  the  heels  like  a  traitor?" 

"Pork,"  answered  the  swineherd. 

"I  am  very  glad  every  fool  knows  that 
too,"  said  Wamba,  "and  pork,  I  think 
is  good  Norman-French;  and  so  when 
the  brute  lives  and  is  in  charge  of  a 
Saxon  slave,  she  goes  by  her  Saxon 
name;  but  becomes  a  Norman  and  is 
called  pork,  when  she  is  carried  to  the 
castle-hall  to  feast  among  the  nobles; 
■what  dost  thou  think  of  this,  friend 
Gurth,    ha?" 

All  of  which  goes  to  show  that  friend 
Wamba,  in  his  way,  was  as  much  a 
walking  delegate  of  sedition  as  Rousseau 
ever  was.     Suggestion  is  a  great  teacher. 

At  the  time  of  the  Norman  Conquest 
there  was  a  Saxon  slave  trade  in  Eng- 
land, according  to  Green,  Hallam,  Taine 
and  other  authorities,  which  had  its 
headquarters  at  Bristol  and  was  finally 
suppressed  by  William  the  Conqueror. 
Taine  (History  of  English  Literature) 
tells  the  story  thus:  "At  Bristol,  at  the 
time  of  the  Conquest,  as  we  are  told  by 
an  historian  of  the  time  (Life  of  Bishop 
Wolston)  it  was  the  custom  to  buy  men 
and  women  in  all  parts  of  England,  and 
to  carry  them  to  Ireland  for  sale  in  or- 
der to  make  money.  The  buyer  usually 
made  the  young  women  pregnant,  and 
took  them  to  market  in  that  condition 
in  order  to  insure  a  better  price."  Taine 
quotes    his   authority    as    follows:    "You 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  53 

might  have  seen  with  sorrow  long  files 
of  young  people  of  both  sexes  and  of 
the  greatest  beauty,  bound  with  ropes, 
and  daily  exposed  for  sale.  .  .  .  They 
sold  in  this  manner  as  slaves  their  near- 
est relative,  and  even  their  own  chil- 
dren." 

Green  declares  that  when  Henry  II 
finally  undertook  the  Conquest  of  Ire- 
land, that  country  was  filled  with  Saxon 
Hathnaughts  who  had  been  enslaved,  and 
that  this  was  one  of  the  grounds  for 
the  invasion.  Hallam  quotes  Giraldus 
Cambrensis  to  show  that  the  Irish  en- 
tered into  an  agreement,  finally,  to  eman- 
cipate the  slaves,  but  he  does  not  name 
the  Hibernian  Lincoln  of  the  occasion. 

Green  ("History  of  the  English  Peo- 
ple") calls  attention  to  the  rise  of  the 
universities  as  a  menace  to  the  perpetuity 
of  feudalism.  The  democratic  tendencies 
of  the  great  Schools  did  much  to  under- 
mine the  system  just  as  we  see  in  the 
Russian  literature  of  our  own  day  that 
the  student  life  in  the  university  towns 
of  Muscovy  has  hastened  the  day  of 
Ivan  Hathnaught's  emancipation  and  has 
brought  greater  freedom  to  those  that 
toil. 

According  to  Green  the  university  was 
a  protest  against  the  isolation  of  man 
from  man.  With  the  Latin  the  tongue 
of  the  learned  everywhere,  "a  common 
intellectual  kinship  and  rivalry,"  says 
Green,  "took  the  place  of  the  petty 
strifes  which  parted  province  from  prov- 
ince and  realm  from  realm." 


54  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

Wandering  Oxford  Scholars  carried  the 
writings  of  Wyclif  to  the  libraries  of 
Prague,  we  are  told,  and  who  can  doubt 
that  the  interchange  of  knowledge  by  dif- 
ferent countries  hastened  the  great  spir- 
itual revolution  of  which  the  English 
WycUf  and  the  Bohemian  Huss  and  Je- 
rome of  Prague  were  the  precursors — ■ 
the  Reformation  of  Luther? 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  BLACK  DEATH  EMANCIPATES 
DENNIS. 

The  Black  Death  which  swept  away 
25,000,000  of  Europe's  inhabitants,  scourg- 
ed the  Continent  between  1348  and 
1351.  It  swept  England  in  1349.  This 
great  calamity  had  an  important  bearing 
on  the  question  of  wages  and  constitutes 
an  epoch  In  the  history  of  the  tribe  of 
Hathnaught. 

Says  the  International  Encyclopedia: 
"The  institution  of  the  Guild  was  the 
protest  of  the  labouring  class  against 
feudalism.  Ociginating  in  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  family  system,  it  became  intrench- 
ed behind  the  growing  strength  of  Chris- 
tianity, and  gradually  assimilated  with 
It  all  the  forces  that  were  inimical  to  the 
control  of  the  labouring  class  by  the 
feudal  barons  and  other  potentates. 
Through  the  influence  of  the  Guild,  hand- 
labour  became  a  power,  hand  labourers 
were  artists,  and  the  golden  age  of  man- 
ual skill  arrived.  In  the  work  of  the 
loom.  In  metal  working  and  wood  carv- 
ing, in  the  manufacture  of  pottery  and 
glass,  this  period  has  never  been  equal- 
led.    Artists  Uke  the  Delia  Robbias,  Ghi- 

55 


56  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

berta,  Andrea  del  Sarto,  and  Benvenuto 
Cellini  ennobled  labour.  But  the  age  be- 
came luxurious,  and  the  masterpieces 
of  art  labour  centered  in  a  few  hands. 

"As  has  ever  been  the  case  in  history, 
interests  conflicted,  wealth  tended  to  cen- 
tralize and  consolidate  itself,  the  Guilds 
divided  among  themselves  into  plodders 
and  those  who  accumulated  the  results 
of  their  toil,  vast  operations  in  trade  be- 
came possible  to  those  who  possessed  the 
necessary  enterprise  and  skill,  and  so 
Capital  was  born  as  a  new  factor  in  the 
utilization  of  labour,  and  a  new  enemy 
for  the  labourer  to  confront  and  to  an- 
tagonize. The  influence  of  the  new  force 
was  speedily  felt,  and  the  tendency  to 
exclusiveness  and  monopoly  on  the  part 
of  the  wealthy  awakened  in  the  workers 
the  idea  of  organization,  and  there  grew 
up  an  independent  working  class  for  the 
first  time  in  history.  Now,  too,  for  the 
first  time  in  its  application  to  large  and 
organized  bodies  of  labourers,  the  wage 
question  took  prominence. 

"This  arose  primarily  from  the  effect 
upon  the  population  of  the  terrible 
plagues  and  famines  which,  beginning 
about  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury, began  to  devastate  Europe.  The 
depopulation  of  countries  resulted  in  a 
scarcity  of  labourers,  but  every  attempt  on 
the  part  of  the  latter  to  insure  the  adop- 
tion of  a  higher  rate  of  wages  on  this 
account  met  with  strenuous  and  per- 
sistent opposition  from  employers." 

Edgar  Sanderson  in  his  "History  of  the 


DENNIS  HATHNAVGHT  57 

World,"  says:  "The  effect  in  England  (of 
the  Black  Death)  was  to  raise  the  wages 
paid  by  landowners,  who  now  tilled  their 
lands  mostly  by  hired  labour,  and  to 
cause  some  legislation  to  compel  the  pea- 
eants  to  work  at  fixed  wages  in  their 
own  localities.  Much  of  the  land  ceased, 
from  the  lack  of  labourers,  to  be  tilled  for 
corn,  and  became  pasture  for  the  raising 
of  wool,  which  was  a  source  of  great 
profit  by  export  for  weaving  in  the  looms 
of  the  Netherlands." 

Green  (History  of  the  English  People) 
says:  "The  social  strife,  too,  gathered  bit- 
terness with  every  effort  at  repression. 
It  was  in  vain  that  Parliament  after  Par- 
liament increased  the  severity  of  its  laws. 
The  demands  of  the  Parhament  of  1376 
show  how  inoperative  the  previous  Sta- 
tutes of  Labourers  had  proved.  They 
prayed  that  constables  be  directed  to  ar- 
rest all  who  infringed  the  statute,  that  no 
labourer  should  be  allowed  to  take  refuge 
In  a  town  and  become  an  artisan  if  there 
were  need  of  his  services  in  the  country 
from  which  he  came,  and  that  the  king 
would  protect  lords  and  employers  against 
the  threats  of  death  uttered  by  serfs 
who  refused  to  serve. 

"The  reply  of  the  Royal  Council  shows 
that  statesmen  at  any  rate  were  begin- 
ning to  feel  that  oppression  might  be 
pushed  too  far.  The  king  refused  to  in- 
terfere by  any  further  and  harsher  pro- 
visions between  employers  and  employed, 
and  left  cases  of  breach  of  law  to  be  dealt 
with  in  his   ordinary  courts  of  justice — 


58  DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT 

on  the  one  side  he  forbade  the  threaten- 
ing gatherings  which  were  already  com- 
mon in  the  country,  but  on  the  other  he 
forbade  the  illegal  exactions  of  the  em- 
ployers. With  such  a  reply,  however, 
the  proprietary  class  were  hardly  likely 
to  be  content.  Two  years  later  the  Par- 
liament of  Gloucester  called  for  a  fugi- 
tive slave  law  which  would  enable  lords 
to  seize  their  serfs  in  whatever  county 
or  town  they  found  refuge,  and  in  1379 
they  prayed  that  judges  might  be  sent 
five  times  a  year  into  every  shire  to  en- 
force the  Statute  of  Labourers." 

Frederick  W.  Hackwood  in  a  work 
bearing  the  sarcastic  title,  "The  Good 
Old  Times,"  also  points  out  the  ultimate 
benefits  to  Dennis,  that  followed  in  the 
wake  of  the  Black  Death.  He  shows  that 
in  consequence  of  the  great  mortality, 
food  was  cheap  and  abundant  in  the  first 
year  of  the  plague. 

As  the  plague  continued,  agriculture 
was  neglected  and  the  price  of  fopd  in- 
creased enormously.  The  scarcity  of 
labour  put  a  premium  upon  it  and  Den- 
nis was  not  slow  to  demand  high  wages. 
Hackwood  says  that  the  laws  aimed  at 
regulating  wages  and  the  labour  market, 
were  enforced  upon  the  Hathnaughts  by 
fines  and  punishment  of  a  corporal  na- 
ture. But  it  was  all  to  no  purpose  for  a 
rise  In  the  price  of  corn  made  it  im- 
possible for  Dennis  to  live  under  the  old 
wage  standard. 

Great  landowners  tried  to  enforce  the 
regulations  of  the  statute,  however,  and 


DENNIS  HATHNAUQHT  59 

the  expedient  was  hit  upon  of  branding 
runaway  Hathnaughts  on  the  forehead. 
Citizens  of  towns  harbouring  runaways 
were  liable  to  severe  punishment.  Here 
and  there  a  landowner  converted  his  land 
into  sheep  pastures  because  of  the  diffi- 
culty of  getting  labour,  while  others  be- 
gan leasing  the  land  for  rental  to  farmers 
which  put  the  burden  of  finding  labour  to 
till  the  soil  sauarely  upon  the  tenant. 
Thus  originated  in  the  days  immediately 
following  the  Black  Death,  the  class  of 
tenant  farmers  now  so  important  an  ele- 
ment in  rural  life — the  yeomanry  of  Mer- 
rie  England. 

Experiments  with  sheep  farming,  ac- 
cording to  Hackwood,  led  to  important  re- 
sults. The  wool  trade  grew  to  be  a  source 
of  great  wealth  and  lords  who  so  em- 
ployed their  land,  began  to  encroach  upon 
the  common  lands,  which  they  fenced  in, 
thereby  arbitrarily  and  illegally  shut- 
ting out  the  Hathnaughts  who  had  long 
enjoyed  the  right  of  free  pasturage.  It 
is  from  this  time  that  date  the  hedges, 
so  characteristic  to-day  of  the  English 
landscape — a  thing  of  beauty  that  had  its 
origin  In  robbery  and  injustice,  and  in 
many  Instances  of  tragic  results  to  the 
long-suffering  Hathnaughts. 

While  these  rapacious  lords  were  try- 
ing to  abolish  wages  and  restore  the  serf- 
dom of  the  old  feudal  days,  others  of  a 
more  discerning  kind  concluded  it  would 
be  wiser  and  in  the  end  more  profitable 
to  control  all  means  of  supply  and  make 
their   own  bargain   with   Dennis.     Public 


60  DENNIS   HATHNAUGHT 

lands  were  appropriated  by  the  whole- 
sale by  these  mediaeval  land  grabbers  who 
pretended  a  philanthropic  desire  to  re- 
claim waste  places  and  thus  improve  the 
national  prosperity.  Parhament  woriceu 
hand  in  glove  with  the  land  robbers  and 
the  system  continaed  until  1845  when  a 
million  acres  were  enclosed.  Thousands 
of  private  acts  of  Parliament  sanctioned 
this  wholesale  larceny  of  the  public  do- 
main which,  crowded  the  Hathnaughts 
into  tighter  and  tighter  quarters  on  the 
"tight   little  island." 

John  Ball,  who  preached  sedition  in  the 
reign  of  Richard  II  (1381),  inculcated 
levelling  principles  among  the  Hath- 
naughts, according  to  David  Hume  in 
his  "History  of  England."  Says  Hume: 
"The  first  faint  dawn  of  the  arts  and  of 
good  government  in  that  age,  had  excited 
the  minds  of  the  populace  in  different 
states  of  Europe,  to  wish  for  a  better 
condition,  and  to  murmur  against  those 
chains  which  the  laws  enacted  by  the 
haughty  nobility  and  gentry  had  so  long 
imposed  upon  them.  The  commotions  of 
the  people  in  Flanders,  the  mutiny  of  the 
peasants  in  France,  were  the  natural  ef- 
fects of  the  growing  spirit  of  indepen- 
dence; and  the  report  of  these  events 
being  brought  into  England,  whose  per- 
sonal slavery,  a.s  we  learn  from  Frois- 
sart,  was  moie  general  than  in  any  other 
country  in  Europe,  had  prepared  the 
minds  of  the  multitude  lor  an  insurrec- 
tion. 

"Ono     John     Ball,     also,     a     seditious 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  61 

preacher  who  affected  low  popularity, 
went  about  the  country  and  Inculcated  on 
his  audience  the  principles  of  the  first 
origin  of  mankind  from  one  common 
stock,  their  equal  right  to  liberty  and  to 
all  the  goods  of  nature,  the  tyranny  of 
artificial  distinctions  and  the  abuses 
which  had  arisen  from  the  degradation  of 
the  more  considerable  part  of  the  species, 
and  the  aggrandizement  of  a  few  insolent 
rulers.  These  doctrines,  so  agreeable  to 
the  populace  and  so  conformable  to  the 
ideas  of  primitive  equality  which  are  in- 
graven  in  the  hearts  of  all  men,  were 
greedily  received  by  the  multitude  and 
scattered  the  sparks  of  that  sedition 
which  the  present  tax  raised  into  a  con- 
flagration." 

In  a  footnote  Hume  says:  "There  were 
two  verses  at  that  time  in  the  mouths  of 
the  common  people,  which,  In  spite  of 
prejudice,  one  cannot  but  regard  with 
some  degree  of  approbation: 

When  Adam  delved  and  Eve  span, 
Where  was  then  the  gentleman?" 
The  tax  mentioned  by  Hume  was  the 
Imposition  of  three  groats  a  head  on 
every  person,  male  or  female,  above  fif- 
teen years  of  age.  The  first  disorder  was 
raised  by  a  blacksmith  of  the  tribe  of 
Hathnaught,  in  a  village  of  Essex.  The 
collecting  of  the  tax  had  been  farmed  out 
to  tax-gatherers  in  each  county,  and  one 
of  these  insisting  on  payment  for  a 
daughter  of  the  blacksmith,  offered  indig- 
nities to  the  child  with  the  result  that 
Hathnaught  brained  him  with  a  hammer. 


62  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

Immediately  the  other  Hathnaughts 
rushed  to  arms  headed  by  Wat  Tyler, 
Jack  Straw,  Hob  Carter,  and  Tom  Miller. 
One  hundred  thousand  of  them  assem- 
bled at  Blackheath,  and  some  of  them,  to 
show  their  purpose  of  levelling  all  man- 
kind, forced  kisses  on  the  king's  mother 
who  was  returning  from  a  pilgrimage  to 
Canterbury.  Lawyers  fared  badly,  for 
the  Hathnaughts,  regarding  the  men  of 
law  as  enemies,  hanged  every  one  they 
encountered.  Ability  to  read  and  write 
was  enough  to  condemn  the  victim. 

Richard  II  took  refuge  in  the  Tourer, 
but  finally  had  to  come  forth  and  deal 
with  the  rebels  who  had  been  engaged  in 
a  campaign  of  murder  and  pillage.  At 
a  conference  with  the  king,  Wat  Tyler 
was  so  insolent  that  Walworth,  the  Mayor 
of  London,  struck  him  down  with  his 
sword  and  members  of  the  king's  retinue 
dispatched  the  rebel  chief.  The  Hath- 
naughts would  have  wreaked  a  terrible 
revenge  had  it  not  been  for  Richard's 
presence  of  mind.  With  wonderful  cool- 
ness he  ventured  among  them  and  said 
he  would  be  their  leader.  The  poor  sim- 
pletons were  granted  charters  and  liber- 
ties, and  they  thought  the  millennium 
well  under  way,  but  not  long  afterward 
the  king  gathered  a  great  force  of  ad- 
herents and  forced  the  rebels  to  submit. 
Parliament  revoked  the  charters  of  en- 
franchisement, certain  leaders  were  exe- 
cuted without  process  of  law,  and  the 
Hathnaughts  who  had  hoped  to  see  all 
rank  and  distinctions  levelled,  were  again 
enslaved. 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  63 

Thus,  while  the  Black  Death  emanci- 
pated Dennis  from  serfdom  and  made  him 
class  conscious,  the  rising  of  the  Hath- 
naughts  under  Wat  Tyler  left  him  with- 
out political  liberty,  a  boon  for  which  he 
is  still  battling  in  our  day  under  Lloyd 
George  and  the  Labour  party. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  BECOMES  A 
CITIZEN. 

When  you  say  your  daily  prayers,  you 
should  thank  Heaven  for  the  mountains 
and  the  cities,  for  they  have  done  much 
to  win  you  freedom.  In  Sheridan 
Knowles'  "William  Tell"  we  see  how  lov- 
ingly the  Swiss  Hathnaught  addressed  his 
"crags  and  peaks,"  but  back  of  the  walls 
of  the  cities,  no  less  than  in  the  moun- 
tains, embattled  Hathnaughts  have  won 
charters  of  liberty  in  many  a  hard-fought 
contest  with  feudal  privileges. 

Duruy,  in  his  "Middle  Ages,"  traces  the 
beginning  of  the  communal  movement  to 
1067,  when  the  city  of  Mens  went  to  war 
against  Its  overlord.  Little  by  little  the 
burgesses,  often  with  the  aid  of  the  kings 
who  wished  to  break  down  the  vast  feudal 
power,  won  concession  after  concession. 
In  "the  good  old  days,"  a  freeman,  linger- 
ing a  year  and  a  day  upon  the  domain  of 
a  lord,  became,  automatically,  a  serf.  In 
the  days  when  the  city  began  to  rise  and 
flourish,  the  fact  that  a  serf  dwelt  unchal- 
lenged within  its  walls  for  a  year  and  a 
day,  made  him  a  freeman.  By  the  twelfth 
century  the  serf  had  become  so  far  ac- 
knowledged to  be  a  human  being  that  he 

94 


DENNIS  H AT HN AUGHT  65 

could  leg-ally  give  testimony  in  a  court  of 
law. 

Guizot  (History  of  Civilization  in  Eu- 
rope), discussing  the  rise  of  free  cities, 
declares  that  it  was  not  till  the  eleventh 
and  twelfth  centuries  that  corporate  cit- 
ies make  any  figure  in  history.  "I  cannot, 
at  this  period,"  he  says,  "call  in  the  tes- 
timony of  known  and  contemporary 
events,  because  it  was  not  till  between 
the  twelfth  and  fifteenth  centuries  that 
corporations  attained  any  degree  of  per- 
fection and  influence,  that  those  institu- 
tions bore  any  fruit,  and  that  we  can  veri- 
fy our  assertions  by  history.  .  .  .  But 
let  us  enter  one  of  those  free  cities  and 
see  what  is  going-  on  within  it.  Here 
things  take  quite  another  turn;  we  find 
ourselves  in  a  fortified  town,  defended  by 
armed  burgesses.  Those  burgesses  fix 
their  own  taxes,  elect  their  own  magis- 
trates, have  their  own  courts  of  judica- 
ture, their  own  public  assemblies  for  de- 
liberating upon  public  measures,  from 
which  none  are  excluded.  They  make 
war  at  their  own  expense,  even  against 
their  suzerain,  maintain  their  own  mi- 
litia. In  short,  they  govern  themselves, 
they  are  sovereigns.  ...  In  the  pres- 
ent day  the  burgesses  in  a  national  point 
of  view,  are  everything — municipalities 
nothing;  formerly  corporations  were 
everything,  while  the  burgesses,  as  re- 
spects the  nation,  were  nothing." 

Guizot  says  that  from  the  fifth  cen- 
tury to  the  time  of  the  complete  organ- 
ization of  the  feudal  system,  the  state  of 


6G  DENNIS   HATHNAUGHT 

the  times  was  continually  getting  worse. 
Before  that  time  the  towns  had  retained 
some  fragments  of  Roman  institutions  in 
the  government  of  the  towns.  Upon  the 
triumph  of  the  feudal  system  the  Hath- 
naughts  of  the  towns,  without  falling  into 
the  slavery  of  the  agriculturists,  were  en- 
tirely subjected  to  the  control  of  a  lord, 
were  included  in  some  fief,  and  lost,  by  this 
title,  somewhat  of  the  independence  which 
still  remained  to  them. 

Guizot  continues:  "When  once,  how- 
ever, the  feudal  system  was  fairly  estab- 
lished, when  every  man  had  taken  his 
place,  and  became  fixed,  as  it  were,  to 
the  soil;  when  the  wandering  life  had 
entirely  ceased,  the  towns  again  assumed 
some  importance — a  new  activity  began 
to  display  itself  within  them.  This  is  not 
surprising.  Human  activity,  as  we  all 
know,  is  like  the  fertility  of  the  soil: 
when  the  disturbing  process  is  over,  it  re- 
appears and  makes  all  to  glow  and  blos- 
som; wherever  there  appears  the  least 
glimmering  of  peace  and  order  the  hopes 
of  man  are  excited,  and  with  his  hopes  his 
industry.  Ihis  is  what  took  place  in  the 
cities.  No  sooner  was  society  a  little  set- 
tled under  the  feudal  system,  than  the 
proprietors  of  fiefs  began  to  feel  new 
wants,  and  to  acquire  a  certain  taste  for 
improvement  and  melioration;  this  gave 
rise  to  some  little  commerce  and  industry 
In  the  towns  of  their  domains;  wealth  and 
population  increased  within  them — slowly 
for  certain,  but  still  they  increased. 

"Among     other     circumstances     which 


DENNIS  IIATHNAUGIIT  67 

aided  in  bringing-  this  about,  there  is  one 
which,  in  my  opinion,  has  not  been  suf- 
ficiently noticed, — I  mean  the  asylum,  the 
protection  which  the  churches  afforded  to 
fugitives.  Before  the  free  towns  were 
constituted,  before  they  were  in  a  condi- 
tion by  their  power,  their  fortifications,  to 
ofiEer  an  asylum  to  the  desolate  population 
of  the  country,  when  there  was  no  place 
of  safety  for  them  but  the  church,  this 
circumstance  alone  was  sufficient  to  draw 
into  the  cities  many  unfortunate  persons 
and  fugitives.  These  sought  refuge  either 
in  the  church  itself  or  within  its  pre- 
cincts; it  was  not  merely  the  lower  or- 
ders, such  as  serfs,  villeins,  and  so  on, 
that  sought  this  protection,  but  frequent- 
ly men  of  considerable  rank  and  wealth, 
who  might  chance  to  be  proscribed.  The 
chronicles  of  the  times  are  full  of  exam- 
ples of  this  kind.  We  find  men  lately 
powerful,  upon  being  attacked  by  some 
more  powerful  neighbour,  or  by  the  king 
himself,  abandoning  their  dwellings,  and 
carrying  away  all  the  property  they  could 
rake  together,  entering  into  some  city,  and 
placing  themselves  under  the  protection 
of  a  church:  they  became  citizens.  Ref- 
ugees of  this  sort  had,  in  my  opinion  a 
considerable  influence  upon  the  progress 
of  the  cities;  they  introduced  into  them, 
besides  their  wealth,  elements  of  a  popu- 
lation superior  to  the  great  mass  of  their 
inhabitants." 

In  the  old  days,  men  wandered  far  to 
pillage,  but  under  the  fixed,  settled  life 
of  the  feudal  system,  the  brunt  of  pillage 
fell  upon  the  cities. 


68  DENNIS   HATHNAUGHT 

Guizot  says:  "The  exactions  of  the  pro- 
prietors of  fiefs  upon  the  burgesses  were 
redoubled  at  the  end  of  the  tenth  century. 
"WTienever  the  lord  of  the  domain,  by 
which  a  city  was  girt,  felt  a  desire  to  in- 
crease his  wealth,  he  gratified  his  avarice 
at  the  expense  of  the  citizens. 

"It  was  more  particularly  at  this  period 
that  the  citizens  complained  of  the  total 
want  of  commercial  secui-ity.  Merchants 
on  returning  from  their  trading  rounds, 
could  not,  with  safety,  return  to  their  city. 
Every  avenue  was  taken  possession  of  by 
the  lord  of  the  domain  and  his  vassals. 
The  moment  in  which  industry  com- 
menced its  career  was  precisely  that  in 
which  security  was  most  wanting.  Noth- 
ing is  more  galling  to  an  active  spirit  than 
to  be  deprived  of  the  long  anticipated  plea- 
sure of  enjoying  the  fruits  of  his  indus- 
try .  .  .  There  is  in  the  progressive 
movement,  which  elevates  a  man  of  a 
population  toward  a  new  fortune,  a  spirit 
of  resistance  against  iniquity  and  vio- 
lence much  more  energetic  than  in  any 
other  situation." 

It  was  a  time,  we  read,  when  there  was 
no  settled  order,  but  a  perpetual  recur- 
rence of  individual  will,  refusing  to  sub- 
mit to  authority. 

"Such,"  says  Guizot,  "was  the  conduct 
of  the  major  part  of  the  holders  of  fiefs 
toward  their  .suzerains,  of  the  small  pro- 
prietors of  land  to  the  greater;  so  that  at 
the  very  time  when  the  cities  were  op- 
pressed and  tormented,  at  the  moment 
when  they  had  new  and  greater  interests 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  69 

to  sustain,  they  had  before  their  eyes  a 
continual  lesson  of  insurrection. 

"The  feudal  system  rendered  this  ser- 
vice to  mankind — it  has  constantly  exhib- 
ited individual  will,  displaying  itself  in  all 
its  power  and  energy —  ...  In  spite 
of  their  weakness,  in  spite  of  the  pro- 
digious inequality  which  existed  between 
them  and  the  great  proprietors,  their 
lords,  the  cities  everywhere  broke  out 
into  rebellion  against  them.  .  .  .  Doubt- 
less in  the  eighth,  ninth,  and  tenth  cen- 
turies there  were  many  attempts  at  re- 
sistance, many  efforts  made  for  free- 
dom:— many  attempts  to  escape  from 
bondage,  which  not  only  were  unsuccess- 
ful, but  remained  without  glory.  Still 
we  may  rest  assured  that  those  attempts 
had  a  vast  influence  upon  succeeding 
events:  they  kept  alive  and  maintained 
the  spirit  of  liberty — they  prepared  the 
great  insurrection  of  the  eleventh  cen- 
tury." 

Guizot  describes  the  construction  of  the 
house  of  a  citizen  of  the  twelfth  century 
so  far  as  one  can  now  obtain  an  idea  of  it. 

"It  consisted  usually,"  he  said,  "of  three 
stories,  one  room  in  each;  that  on  the 
ground  floor  served  as  a  general  eating- 
room  for  the  family;  the  first  story  was 
rauch  elevated  for  the  sake  of  security, 
and  this  is  the  most  remarkable  circum- 
stance in  the  construction.  The  room  In 
this  story  was  the  habitation  of  the  mas- 
ter of  the  house  and  his  wife.  The  house 
was,  in  general,  flanked  with  an  angular 
tower,  usually  square:   another  symptom 


70  DENNIS   HATUNAUGHT 

of  war;  another  means  of  defence.  The 
second  story  consisted  again  of  a  sin- 
gle room;  its  use  is  not  known,  but  it 
probably  served  for  the  children  and  do- 
mestics. Above  this  in  most  houses,  was 
a  small  platform,  evidently  intended  as 
an  observatory  or  watch  tower.  Every 
feature  of  the  building  bore  the  appear- 
ance of  war.  This  was  the  decided  char- 
acteristic, the  true  name  of  the  movement 
which  wrought  out  the  freedom  of  the 
cities.  .  .  .  Treaties  of  peace  between 
the  cities  and  their  adversaries  were  so 
many  charters.  These  charters  of  the  cit- 
ies were  so  many  positive  treaties  of 
peace  between  the  burgesses  and  their 
lords." 

These  insurrections  Guizot  regards  as 
spontaneous,  growing  out  of  a  similarity 
of  oppressions  of  the  Hathnaughts,  and 
in  no  sense  the  result  of  concerted  action. 
Each  town  rebelled  on  its  own  account 
against  its  own  lord,  unconnected  with 
any  other  place.  Royalty,  seeking  its  own 
advantage  sometimes  sided  with  the  cit- 
ies, sometimes  with  the  lords,  but  alto- 
gether, he  thinks,  produced  more  of  good 
than  of  evil.  This  inevitable  interference 
of  royalty,  brought  on  frequent  and  close 
connections  between  the  Hathnaughts 
and  the  king  and  the  result  was  the 
cities  became  a  part  of  the  state  and  be- 
gan to  have  relations  with  the  general 
government. 

Says  Guizot:  "This  formation  of  a 
great  social  class  was  the  necessary  re- 
sult of  the  local  enfranchisement  of  the 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  71 

burgesses.  .  ,  ,  In  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury, this  class  was  almost  entirely  com- 
posed of  merchants  or  small  traders,  and 
little  landed  or  house  proprietors  who 
had  taken  up  their  residence  in  the  city. 
Three  centuries  afterward  there  were 
added  to  this  class  lawyers,  physicians, 
men  of  letters,  and  the  local  magistrates." 

This  rise  of  free  citizenship,  Guizot 
points  out,  resulted  in  the  struggle  of 
classes,  "a  struggle  which  constitutes  the 
very  fact  of  modern  history,  and  of  which 
it  is  full."  .  .  .  "No  class  has  been 
able  to  overcome,  to  subject  the  others; 
the  struggle,  instead  of  rendering  society 
stationary,  has  been  a  principal  cause  of 
its  progress."  .  .  .  "The  cities  them- 
selves, in  their  turn,  entered  into  the 
feudal  system;  they  had  vassals,  and  be- 
came suzerains;  and  by  this  title  pos- 
sessed that  portion  of  sovereignty  which 
was  inherent  with  suzei-ainty.  A  great 
confusion  arose  between  the  rights  which 
they  held  from  their  feudal  position  and 
those  which  they  had  acquired  by  their 
insurrection;  and  by  this  double  title  they 
held  the  sovereignty. 

"Let  us  see,  as  far  as  the  very  scanty 
sources  left  us  will  allow,  how  the  in- 
ternal government  of  the  cities,  at  least 
in  the  more  early  times,  was  managed. 
The  entire  body  of  the  inhabitants  formed 
the  communal  assembly;  all  those  who 
had  taken  the  communal  oath — and  all 
who  dwelt  within  the  walls  were  obliged 
to  do  so — were  summoned,  by  the  tolling 
of  the  bell,  to  the  general  assembly.     In 


72  DENNIS  H AT HN AUGHT 

this  was  named  the  magistrates.  The 
number  chosen,  and  the  power  and  pro- 
ceedings of  the  magistrates,  differed  very 
considerably.  After  choosing  the  magis- 
trates, the  assemblies  dissolved;  and  the 
magistrates  governed  almost  alone,  suf- 
ficiently arbitrarily,  being  under  no  fur- 
ther responsibility  than  the  new  elec- 
tions, or  perhaps,  popular  outbreaks 
which  were,  at  this  time,  the  great  guar- 
antee for  good  government.  ...  It 
was  impossible,  especially  while  such  man- 
ners prevailed,  to  establish  anything  like 
a  regular  government  with  proper  guar- 
antees of  order  and  duration.  The  greater 
part  of  the  population  of  these  cities  were 
ignorant,  brutal  and  savage  to  a  degree 
which  rendered  them  exceedingly  diflacult 
to  govern." 

Inevitably,  as  Guizot  shows,  there  was 
formed  a  burgess  aristocracy,  and  a  sys- 
tem of  privileges  was  introduced  into  the 
cities,  resulting  in  great  inequality.  There 
grew  up  in  all  the  cities,  a  number  of 
opulent  burgesses  and  a  population  more 
or  less  numerous  of  Hathnaughts  who, 
despite  their  Inferiority,  were  not  with- 
out influence.  The  superior  citizens,  he 
says,  found  themselves  pressed  between 
two  great  difficulties:  first,  the  arduous 
one  of  governing  the  turbulent  Hath- 
naughts; and  secondly,  that  of  with- 
standing the  continual  attempts  of  the 
ancient  master  of  the  borough,  who 
sought  to  regain  his  former  power.  Such, 
he  says,  was  the  situation  of  their  af- 
fains,  not  only  in  France,  but  in  Europe 
down  to  the  sixteenth  century. 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  73 

Wolfgang  Menzel  (History  of  Germany) 
declares  that  the  cities  of  the  Teutonic 
races,  Insignificant  in  origin,  gradually 
rose  to  a  height  of  power  that  made  it 
possible  for  them  to  defy  the  authority  of 
the  sovereign  and  to  become  the  most 
powerful  support  of  the  empire.  Particu- 
lai'ly  interesting  to  the  student  of  indus- 
trialism is  his  description  of  the  German 
Guilds.  You  will  note  all  through  his  ac- 
count, that  Fritz  Hathnaught  is  entitled 
to  wear  service  stripes  as  a  Soldier  in  the 
army  of  human  liberty.    Listen  to  Menzel: 

"Increasing  civilization  had  produced 
numerous  wants,  which  commerce  and 
industry  alone  supply.  The  people,  more- 
over, oppressed  by  the  feudal  system  in 
the  country,  sheltered  themselves  beneath 
the  segis  of  the  city  corporations.  The 
artisans,  although  originally  serfs,  were 
always  free.  In  many  cities  the  air  be- 
stowed freedom;  whoever  dwelt  within 
their  walls  could  not  be  reduced  to  a  state 
of  vassalage,  and  was  instantly  affran- 
chised, although  formerly  a  serf  when 
dwelling  beyond  the  wall. 

"In  the  thirteenth  century,  every  town 
throughout  Flanders  enjoyed  this  priv- 
ilege. It  was  only  in  the  villages  that 
fell,  at  a  later  period,  under  the  jurisdic- 
tion of  the  towns,  that  the  peasants  still 
remained  in  a  state  of  vassalage.  The 
emperors,  who  beheld  in  the  independence 
and  power  of  the  cities,  a  defense  against 
the  princes  and  popes,  readily  bestowed 
great  privileges  upon  them,  and  released 
them  from  the  jurisdiction  of  the  lords  of 


74  DENNIS   HATHNAUGHT 

the  country,  the  bishops,  and  the  im- 
perial governors.  The  cities  often  as- 
serted their  own  independence,  the  power 
of  a  bishop  being  unable  to  cope  with  that 
of  a  numerous  and  high-spirited  body  of 
citizens.  Ihey  also  increased  their  ex- 
tent at  the  expense  of  the  provincial  no- 
bility, by  throwing-  down  their  castles,  by 
taking  their  serfs  as  Pfahlburger  (subur- 
bans) or  by  purchasing  their  lands. 

"The  imperial  free  cities  had  the  right 
of  prescribing  their  own  laws  which  were 
merely  ratified  by  the  emperor.  .  .  . 
To  the  right  of  legislation  was  added  that 
of  independent  jurisdiction,  which  was  de- 
noted by  the  pillars  known  as  Roland's 
pillars,  and  by  the  red  towers.  The  red 
flag  was  the  sign  of  penal  judicature,  and 
red  towers  were  used  as  prisons  for  crim- 
inals; and  as  the  practice  of  torture  be- 
came more  general  in  criminal  cases,  tor- 
ture, famine,  witch  and  heretic  towers 
were  erected  in  almost  every  town.  The 
management  of  the  town  affairs  was  at 
length  entirely  entrusted  to  the  council, 
which  originally  consisted  of  the  sheriffs 
headed  by  a  mayor,  but  was  afterward 
chiefly  composed  of  members  elected  from 
the  different  parishes,  and  was  at  length 
compelled  to  admit  among  its  number  the 
presidents  of  the  various  guilds;  and  the 
mayor,  the  president  of  the  ancient  bur- 
gesses, was,  consequently,  replaced  by  the 
burgomaster,  or  president  of  the  guilds. 
The  right  of  .self-government  was  denoted 
by  the  bell  on  the  town  or  council  house. 
In  the  Middle  Ages  the  greatest  pride  of 


DENNIS  HATHNAVGHT  75 

the  provincial  cities,  which  had  gained 
independence.  .  .  .  The  gnilds  ere  long 
grasped  at  greater  privileges,  and  formed 
a  democratic  party  which  aimed  at  wrest- 
ing the  management  of  the  town  business 
out  of  the  hands  of  the  aristocratic 
burghers. 

"The  corporations  corresponded  with  the 
ancient  German  Guilds.  The  artisan  en- 
tered as  an  apprentice,  became  partner, 
and  finally  master.  The  apprentice,  like 
the  knightly  squire,  was  obliged  to  travel. 
The  completion  of  a  masterpiece  was  re- 
quired before  he  could  become  a  master. 
Illegitimate  birth  and  immorality  excluded 
the  artisan  from  the  guild.  Each  guild 
was  strictly  superintended  by  a  tribune. 
Every  member  of  a  guild  was  assisted 
when  in  need  by  the  society.  Every  dis- 
agreement between  the  members  was  put 
a  stop  to,  as  injurious  to  the  whole  body. 
The  members  of  one  corporation  generally 
dwelt  in  one  particular  street,  had  their 
common  station  in  the  market,  their  dis- 
tinguishing colors,  and  a  part  assigned  to 
them  in  guarding  the  city,  etc.  These 
guilds  chiefly  conduced  to  bring  art  and 
handicraft  to  perfection." 

The  rise  of  the  English  town  is  de- 
scribed by  Green.  "If,"  he  says,  "we  pass 
from  the  English  university  to  the  Eng- 
lish town,  we  see  a  progress  as  impor- 
tant and  hardly  less  interesting.  In  their 
origin  our  boroughs  were  utterly  unlike 
those  of  the  rest  of  the  ancient  world. 
The  cities  of  Italy  and  Provence  had  pre- 
served the  municipal  institutions  of  their 


76  DENNIS  IIATHNAUGHT 

Roman  past;  the  German  towns  had  been 
founded  by  Henry  the  Fowler  with  the 
purpose  of  sheltering  industry  from  the 
feudal  oppression  around  them;  the  com- 
munes of  Northern  France  sprang-  into 
existence  in  revolt  against  feudal  out- 
rage within  their  wall. 

"But  in  England  the  traditions  of  Rome 
passed  utterly  away,  while  feudal  oppres- 
sion was  held  fairly  in  check  by  the 
Crown.  The  English  town  therefore  was 
in  its  beginning  simply  a  piece  of  the  gen- 
eral country,  organized  and  governed  pre- 
cisely in  the  same  manner  as  the  town- 
ships around  it.  Its  existence  witnessed 
indeed  to  the  need  which  was  felt  in  those 
earlier  times  of  mutual  help  and  protec- 
tion. The  burgh  or  borough  was  probably 
a  more  defensible  place  than  the  common 
village ;  it  may  have  had  a  ditch  or  mound 
about  it  instead  of  the  quickset  hedge  or 
tun  from  which  the  town  took  its  name. 
But  in  itself  it  was  simply  a  township  or 
group  of  townships  where  men  clustered, 
whether  for  trade  or  defense  more  thickly 
than  elsewhere.     .     .     ." 

"Towns  like  Bristol  were  the  direct  re- 
sult of  trade.  There  was  the  same  vari- 
ety in  the  mode  in  which  the  various 
town  communities  were  formed.  WWle 
the  bulk  of  them  grew  by  simple  Increase 
of  population  from  township  to  town, 
larger  boroughs,  such  as  York  with  its 
six  shires,  or  London  with  its  wards  and 
sokes  and  franchises,  show  how  families 
and  groups  of  settlers  settled  down  side 
by   side,   and   claimed   as   they   coalesced, 


DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT  77 

each  for  itself,  its  shire  or  share  of  the 
town-ground,  while  jealously  preserving 
its  individual  life  within  the  town  com- 
munity. But  strange  as  these  aggrega- 
tions might  be,  the  constitution  of  the 
borough  which  resulted  from  them  was 
simply  that  of  the  people  at  large.  Wheth- 
er we  regard  it  as  a  township,  or  rather 
from  its  s.ze  as  a  hundred  or  collection  of 
townships,  the  obligations  of  the  dwellers 
within  its  bounds  were  those  of  the  town- 
ships round,  to  keep  fence  and  trench  in 
good  repair,  to  send  a  contingent  to  the 
fyrd  and  a  reeve  and  four  men  to  the 
hundred  court  and  shire  court. 

"As  in  other  townships,  land  was  a  nec- 
essary accompaniment  of  freedom.  The 
landless  man  who  dwelt  in  a  borough  had 
no  share  in  its  corporate  life:  for  purposes 
of  government  or  property  the  town  con- 
sisted simply  of  the  landed  proprietors 
within  its  bounds. 

"The  common  lands  which  are  still  at- 
tached to  many  of  the  boroughs  take  ua 
back  to  a  time  when  each  township  lay 
within  a  ring  or  mark  of  open  ground 
which  served  at  once  as  boundary  and 
pasture  land.  Each  of  the  four  wards  of 
York  had  its  common  pasture ;  Oxford  has 
still  Its  own  'Portmeadow.' 

"The  inner  life  of  the  borough  lay  as 
in  the  township  about  It,  in  the  hands 
of  its  own  freemen,  gathered  in  borough- 
moot  or  portmannimote.  But  the  social 
change  brought  about  by  the  Danish  wars, 
the  legal  requirement  that  each  man 
should  have  a  lord,  affected  the  towns  as 


78  DENNIS  HATHNAUOHT 

it  affected  the  rest  of  the  country.  Some 
passed  into  the  hands  of  great  thanes  near 
to  them;  the  bulk  became  known  as  in  the 
demesne  of  the  king.  A  new  officer,  the 
lord's  or  king's  reeve,  was  a  sign  of  this 
revolution.  It  was  the  reeve  who  first 
summoned  the  borough-moot  and  admin- 
istered justice  in  it;  it  was  he  who  col- 
lected the  lord's  dues  or  annual  rent  of 
the  town,  and  who  exacted  the  services  it 
owed  to  its  lord. 

"To  modern  eyes  these  services  would 
imply  almost  complete  subjection.  When 
Leicester,  for  instance,  passed  from  the 
hands  of  the  Conqueror  into  those  of  its 
earls,  its  townsmen  were  bound  to  reap 
their  lord's  corn-crops,  to  grind  at  his 
mill,  to  redeem  their  strayed  cattle  from 
his  pound.  The  great  forest  around  was 
the  earl's,  and  it  was  only  out  of  his 
grace  that  the  little  borough  could  drive 
its  swine  into  the  woods  or  pasture  its 
cattle  in  the  glades.  The  justice  and  the 
government  of  a  town  lay  wholly  in  its 
master's  hands;  he  appointed  its  bailiffs, 
received  the  fines  and  forfeitures  of  his 
tenants,  and  the  fees  and  tolls  of  their 
markets  and  fairs." 

"But,"  continues  Green  rather  naively 
in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  Englishman 
has  been  stripped  of  all  save  his  trou- 
sers, "when  once  these  dues  were  paid 
and  these  services  rendered,  the  English 
townsman  was  practically  free.  His  rights 
were  as  rigidly  defined  by  custom  as  those 
of  his  lord.  Property  and  person  alike 
were  secured  against  arbitrary  seizure.  He 


DENNI8  HATHNAUGHT  79 

could  demand  a  fair  trial  on  any  charge, 
and  even  if  justice  was  administered  by 
his  master's  reeve,  it  was  administered  in 
the  presence  and  with  the  assent  of  his 
fellow  townsmen. 

"The  bell  which  swung  out  from  the 
town  tower  gathered  the  burgesses  to  a 
common  meeting,  where  they  could  exer- 
cise rights  of  free  speech  and  free  delib- 
eration on  their  own  affairs.  Their  mer- 
chant guild,  over  its  ale-feast,  regulated 
trade,  distributed  the  sums  due  from  the 
towns  among  the  different  burgesses, 
looked  to  the  due  repairs  of  gate  and  wall, 
and  acted,  in  fact,  pretty  much  the  same 
as  the  town  council  of  to-day.  ...  In 
the  quiet  quaintly  named  streets  and  town 
mead  and  market  place,  in  the  lord's  mill 
beside  the  stream,  in  the  bell  that  swung 
out  its  summons  to  the  crowded  borough- 
mote,  in  merchant-guild,  and  church-guild 
and  craft-guild,  lay  the  life  of  English- 
men who  were  doing  more  than  knight 
and  baron  to  make  England  what  she  is, 
the  life  of  their  homes  and  their  trade,  of 
their  sturdy  battle  with  oppression,  their 
steady  ceaseless  struggle  for  right  and 
freedom. 

"London  stood  first  among  English 
towns  and  the  privileges  which  its  citi- 
zens won  became  precedents  for  the 
burghers  of  meaner  boroughs.  Even  at 
the  conquest  its  power  and  wealth  se- 
cured it  a  full  recognition  of  all  its  an- 
cient privileges  from  the  Conqueror.  In 
one  way  indeed  it  profited  by  the  revolu- 
tion which  laid  England  at  the  feet  of  the 


80  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

stranger.  One  Immediate  result  of  Wil- 
liam's success  was  an  immigration  into 
England  from  the  Continent.  A  peaceful 
invasion  of  the  Norman  traders  followed 
quick  on  the  invasion  of  the  Norman  sol- 
diery. Every  Norman  noble  as  he  quar- 
tered himself  upon  English  lands,  every 
Norman  abbot  as  he  entered  his  English 
cloister,  gathered  French  artists,  French 
shopkeepers,  French  domestics  about 
him," 

But  Dennis  Hathnaught  is  coming  into 
his  own,  and  in  our  day,  centuries  of 
struggle  against  oppression  are  crystal- 
lizing into  ideas  of  municipal  regulation 
and  government  that  make  English  cities 
Important  in  the  study  of  economic  de- 
velopment. More  than  any  other  class  in 
Britain,  Dennis  Hathnaught  is  entitled  to 
the  honour  of  posing  for  a  statue  of  John 
Bull.  John's  square  jaw  is  the  evolution 
of  the  first  grim  resolution  of  the  Hath- 
naughts  to  give  tyranny  the  hurry  call 
to  the  exit 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

DENNIS    FOUNDS    THE  HANSEATIC 
LEAGUE. 

It  may  sound  paradoxical  to  credit  Den- 
nis Hathnaught  with  the  founding  of  such 
a  powerful  and  opulent  organization  as 
the  Hanseatic  League,  but  when  one  un- 
derstands that  the  great  bourgeois  class 
of  the  Middle  Ages — as  indeed  of  all  ages 
— was  recruited  from  the  lower  order  of 
society  it  is  but  historic  justice  to  add 
the  Hanseatic  League  to  the  roll  of  Hath- 
naught's  achievements. 

The  Lords  of  Have-and-Hold,  being 
essentially  a  robber  class,  founded  on  con- 
quest, thievery,  and  the  mailed  fist,  would 
never  think  of  such  an  orderly  thing  as 
the  organization  of  trade  and  the  accu- 
mulating of  wealth  through  the  medium 
of  honest  barter.  Indeed,  the  entire  his- 
tory of  the  League  is  filled  with  incidents 
of  titled  freebooters  and  their  mobs  of  re- 
tainers swooping  down  upon  the  traders 
and  enriching  themselves  through  tribute 
and  pillage. 

The  Hanseatic  League  was  first  an  or- 
ganization of  German  merchants,  and  this 
developed  into  a  commercial  union  of  cer- 
tain German  towns.     Its  rise  is  generally 


81 


82  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

understood  to  date  from  1241,  when  Lu- 
beck  and  Hamburg  formed  an  alliance. 
It  had  factories  or  trading  stations  in 
Wisby,  London,  Novgorod,  Bergen,  and 
Bruges.  The  aims  of  the  League  were 
mainly  to  improve  conditions  for  their 
merchants  abroad  and  establish  a  greater 
unity  among  the  towns  with  a  view  to 
improving  trade  efficiency.  In  England 
the  merchants  were  called  Easterlings, 
whence  the  present  word  sterUng. 

Thanks  to  the  efforts  of  the  Historical 
Society  of  the  Hanseatic  Cities,  we  are 
destined  to  possess  a  fruitful  literature  on 
this  interesting  subject.  There  are  two 
able  works  in  German  on  the  Hanseatic 
League.  One  by  Georg  Sartorius  (Ge- 
schichte  des  hanseatischen  Bundes)  traces 
the  growth  and  ultimate  decadence  of  the 
League  in  a  way  that  makes  the  work 
still  authoritative,  even  though  fuller  ma- 
terial than  the  author  worked  with  is  now 
available.  E.  Dietrich  Schafer  in  his  work 
on  the  subject  had  an  advantage  over 
Sartorius,  for  the  researches  of  the  His- 
torical Societv  of  the  Hanseatic  Cities 
were  accessible  to  him.  So  that  while  he 
does  not  altogether  supplant  Sartorius,  his 
work  is  held  to  be  a  greater  authority. 

Wolfgang  Menzel,  in  his  "History  of 
Germany,"  devotes  considerable  space  to 
the  League.  His  work  is  available  for 
English  readers  in  a  translation  by  Mrs. 
George  Horrocks. 

"The  power  of  the  princes  in  Germany," 
he  says,  "was  counterpoised  by  that  of  the 
cities,  which,  sensible  of  their  inability  in- 


DENNIS   HATHNAUailT  83 

dividually  to  assert  their  liberty,  endan- 
gered by  the  absence  and  subsequent  ruin 
of  the  Emperor,  had  mutually  entered  into 
an  offensive  and  defensive  alliance.  The 
cities  on  the  Northern  Ocean  and  the 
Baltic  vied  with  those  of  Lombardy  in 
denseness  of  population,  and  in  the  asser- 
tion of  their  independence.  Their  fleet  re- 
turned from  the  East  laden  with  glory. 
They  conquered  Lisbon,  besieged  Accon 
and  Damietta,  founded  the  order  of  Ger- 
man Hospitalers,  and  gained  great  part  of 
Livonia  and  Prussia.  A  strict  union  ex- 
isted among  their  numerous  merchants. 
Every  city  possessed  a  corporation  or 
guild,  consisting,  according  to  the  custom 
of  the  times,  of  masters,  partners,  and 
apprentices.  These  guilds  were  armed  and 
formed  the  chief  strength  of  the  city. 

"Ghent  and  Bruges  were  the  first  cities 
in  Flanders  which  became  noted  for  their 
civil  privileges,  their  manufactories,  com- 
merce, and  industry.  In  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury they  had  already  formed  a  Hansa,  a 
great  commercial  association  in  which 
seventeen  cities  took  part.  In  the  thir- 
teenth century,  their  example  was  follow- 
ed by  the  commercial  towns  on  the  Rhine, 
the  Elbe,  and  the  Baltic,  but  on  a  larger 
scale,  the  new  Hansa,  forming  a  political 
as  well  as  a  commercial  asscciation,  which 
was  commenced  by  Lubeck,  between 
which  and  Hamburg  a  treaty  was  made, 
A.  D.  1241,  in  which  Bremen  and  almost 
every  city  in  the  north  of  Germany  as 
far  as  Cologne  and  Brunswick  joined." 

Something  of  their  power  is  shown  by 


84  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

Menzel  in  the  stories  he  tells  of  the 
LUbeck  fleet  worsting  Erich  IV  of  Den- 
mark, and  the  citizens  of  Bremen  pulling 
down  a  custom  house  the  archbishop  had 
erected,  and  asserting  their  independence 
A.  D.  1246.     .     .     . 

Flanders,  he  says,  far  surpassed  other 
countries  in  her  municipal  privileges,  art, 
and  industry,  possessed  the  first  great 
commercial  navy,  and  founded  the  first 
great  commercial  league  or  Hansa  in  the 
twelfth  century. 

"This  example,"  he  continues,  "the  first 
subjection  of  the  Wends  on  the  Baltic, 
and  the  crusades,  greatly  increased  the 
activity  of  commerce  in  the  thirteenth 
century  on  the  Rhine,  the  Elbe,  and  the 
Baltic.  The  crusades  were  undertaken  in 
a  mercantile  as  well  as  a  religious  point 
of  view.  In  the  East  the  merchant  pil- 
grims formed  themselves  into  the  German 
order  of  knighthood,  and,  on  their  return 
to  their  native  country,  leagued  together, 
A.  D.  1241,  for  the  purpose  of  defending 
ti.  its   against    the   native    princes, 

and  their  commerce  against  the  attack  of 
the  foreigner. 

"This  Hansa  League  extended  to  such  a 
degree  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth 
centuries  as  sometimes  to  include  upward 
of  seventy  cities;  its  fleets  ruled  the 
Northern  Ocean,  conquered  entire  coun- 
tries, and  reduced  powerful  sovereigns  to 
submission.  The  union  that  existed  be- 
tween the  cities  was,  nevertheless,  far 
from  firmly  cemented,  and  the  whole  of 
its    immense    force,    was,    from    want    of 


DENNIS  HATHNAUQHT  85 

unanimity,  seldom  brought  to  bear  at  once 
upon  its  enemies.  A  single  attempt  would 
have  placed  the  whole  of  Northern  Ger- 
many within  its  power,  had  the  policy  of 
the  citizens  been  other  than  inercantile, 
and  had  they  not  been  merely  intent  upon 
forcing  the  temporal  and  spiritual  lords  to 
trade  with  them  upon  the  most  favourable 
conditions." 

Liibeck,  Menzel  says,  was  the  metropo- 
lis of  the  whole  league,  where  the  direc- 
tory of  the  Hansa,  the  general  archive 
and  treasury  were  kept,  and  where  the 
great  Hansa  diets  were  held  by  the  depu- 
ties from  all  the  Hanse  towns,  in  which 
they  took  into  deliberation  commercial 
speculations,  the  arming  of  fleets,  peace, 
and  war. 

Menzel  continues,  "At  Bruges,  the  Hansa 
merely  possessed  a  depot  for  their  goods, 
which  passed  hence  into  the  hands  of  the 
Italians.  The  Colognese  merchants  pos- 
sessed a  second  great  depot  as  early  as 
1203,  in  London,  still  known  as  Guildhall, 
the  hall  of  the  merchants'  guild  of  Co- 
logne. At  a  later  period,  the  Hansa  mo- 
nopoUzed  the  whole  commerce  of  England. 
At  Bergen,  in  Norway,  the  Hansa  pos- 
sessed a  third  and  extremely  remarkable 
colony,  3,000  Hanseatic  merchants,  mas- 
ters, and  apprentices  living  there  like 
monks  without  any  women.  The  Han- 
seatic colonists  were  generally  forbidden 
to  marry  lest  they  should  take  possession 
of  the  country  in  which  they  lived  and 
deprive  the  League  of  it.  The  fourth 
great  depot  was  founded  at  Novgorod,  in 


86  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

the  north  of  Russia,  A.  D.  1277.  By  it 
the  ancient  commercial  relations  between 
the  coasts  of  the  Baltic  and  Asia  were 
preserved  and  the  Hansa  traded  by  land 
with  Asia  at  first  through  Riga,  but  on 
the  expulsion  of  the  Tartars  from  Russia 
and  the  subjection  of  Novgorod  by  the 
Tzars,  through  Breslau,  Erfurt,  Magde- 
burg, and  Leipzig.  Germany  and  Europe 
were  thus  supplied  with  spices,  silks, 
jewels,  etc.,  from  Asia;  with  furs,  iron, 
and  immense  quantities  of  herrings  from 
the  North.  France  principally  traded  in 
salt,  while  Germany  exported  beer  and 
wine,  corn,  linen,  and  arms;  Bohemia, 
metals  and  precious  stones;  and  Flanders, 
fine  linen  and  cloths  of  every  description. 

"The  ferocity  of  the  Hungarians,  Ser- 
vians, and  Wallachians,  and  the  enmity 
of  the  Greeks,  effectually  closed  the  Dan- 
ube, the  natural  outlet  for  the  produce  of 
the  interior  of  Germany  toward  Asia.  The 
traffic  on  this  stream  during  the  Crusades 
raised  Ulm,  and,  at  a  later  period,  Augs- 
berg,  to  considerable  importance. 

"The  traffic  on  the  Rhine  was  far  more 
considerable,  notwithstanding  the  heavy 
customs  levied  by  the  barbarous  princes 
and  knights  which  the  Rhinish  league 
was  annually  compelled  to  oppose  and  put 
down  by  force. 

"Cologne  was  the  grand  depot  for  the 
whole  of  the  inland  commerce.  Goods 
were  brought  here  from  every  quarter  of 
the  globe,  and,  according  to  a  Hanseatlc 
law,  no  merchant  coming  from  the  West, 
from   Flanders  or  Spain,  was  allowed  to 


DENNIki   HATHNAUGHT  87 

pass  with  his  goods  further  than  Co- 
logne; none  coming  from  the  East,  not 
even. the  Dutch,  could  mount,  and  none 
from  the  upper  country  descend,  the 
Rhine  beyond  that  city.  The  highroads 
were  naturally  in  a  bad  state,  and  in- 
fested with  toll-gatherers  and  robbers. 
The  merchants  were  compelled  to  pur- 
chase a  safe-conduct  along  the  worst 
roads,  or  to  clear  them  by  force  of  arms. 
Most  of  the  roads  were  laid  by  the  mer- 
chants with  the  permission  of  well-dis- 
posed princes.  Thus,  for  instance,  the 
rich  burgher,  Henry  Cunter  of  Botzen, 
laid  the  road  across  the  rocks  until  then 
impassable,  on  the  Eisack,  between  Botzen 
and  Brixen,  A.  D.  1304;  travellers  up  to 
that  period,  having  been  compelled  to 
make  a  wearisome  detour  through  Meran 
and  Jauffen. 

"The  lace  and  cloth  manufactures  of 
the  Flemish,  which  lent  increased  splen- 
dour to  the  courts,  the  wealthy,  and  the 
high-born,  were  the  first  that  rose  into 
note,  the  Hansa  being  merely  occupied 
with  trade  and  commercial  monopoly. 
Ulm  afterward  attempted  to  compete  with 
the  Italian  manufacturers;  but  Nurem- 
berg, on  account  of  her  central  position, 
less  attracted  by  foreign  commerce,  be- 
came the  first  town  of  manufacturing  re- 
pute In  Germany. 

"The  trade  with  the  rich  East,  and  the 
silver  mines  discovered  in  the  tenth  cen- 
tury in  the  Harz,  in  the  twelfth,  in  the 
Erz  Mountains  in  Bohemia,  brought  more 
money  into  circulation.  The  ancient  Hohl- 


88  DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT 

pfennigs  (solidi,  shillings),  of  which  there 
were  twenty-two  to  a  pound  (and  twelve 
denarii  to  a  shilling)  were  replaced  by 
the  heavy  Groschen  (solidi  grossi),  of 
which  there  were  sixty  to  a  silver  mark, 
and  by  the  albus  or  white  pennies,  which 
varied  in  value.  The  working  of  the  Bo- 
hemian mines  in  the  fourteenth  century, 
brought  the  broad  Prague  Groschen  into 
note;  they  were  reckoned  by  scores, 
always  by  sixties,  the  cardinal  number  in 
Bohemia.  The  smaller  copper  coins,  or 
Heller  (from  hohl,  hollow;  halb,  half;  or 
from  the  free  imperial  town,  Halle)  were 
weighed  by  the  pound,  the  value  of  which 
was  two  gulden,  which  at  a  later  period, 
when  silver  became  more  common,  rose 
to  three." 

But  the  League  went  the  way  of  earth 
at  last.  Its  last  days  are  well  described 
by  Edgar  Sanderson:  (History  of  the 
World)  "The  decline  of  this  great  trade- 
confederation  began  with  a  change  in  the 
movement  of  the  herring.  Early  in  the 
fifteenth  century  the  fish  deserted  the 
Baltic  spawning  grounds  for  the  German 
Ocean;  the  Netherlands  gained  what  the 
Hansa  towns  of  the  eastern  sea  had  lost; 
and  Amsterdam,  In  a  large  degree,  took 
the  place  of  Liibeck,  which,  in  the  four- 
teenth century  had  a  population  ap- 
proaching the  double  of  its  numbers  in 
1870.  The  wealth,  pride,  and  power  of 
these  northern  commercial  towns  waned 
further  after  the  change  of  commercial 
routes  due  to  the  discovery  of  America 
and  of  the  way  to  India  around  the  Cape. 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  89 

The  Dutch  members  of  the  Confederacy 
had  left  it  early  in  the  fifteenth  century, 
and  the  rise  of  British  commerce  in  Tudor 
days  had  its  influence,  while  the  Reforma- 
tion, changing-  the  religion  of  northern 
Europe,  lessened  the  demand  for  wax  for 
candles  as  well  as  for  the  salt  fish  in 
which  some  of  the  towns  still  traded. 
Early  in  the  seventeenth  century  Lubeck, 
Hamburg-,  and  Bremen  were  the  only  sur- 
vivors of  the  Leagrue,  and  these  three 
famous  free  cities,  after  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  relinquished  their  old 
privileges  as  free  ports  by  incorporation 
into  the  German  Zoll  Verein,  or  Customs 
Union." 

Sanderson  nays  a  tribute  to  the  noble 
part  played  by  the  League  in  "spreading 
civilization  through  regions  of  Europe 
sunk  in  barbarism,  and  by  maintaining- 
the  cause  of  right  against  mig-ht." 

Had  the  League  been  less  intent  upon 
trade  it  might  have  founded  a  great  and 
powerful  industrial  empire,  but  its  mem- 
bers, so  long  as  trade  was  unhampered, 
did  not  interfere  with  the  ambitions  of 
princes  and  had  no  wish  to  govern.  We 
should  like  to  see  it  still  flourishing  under 
the  motto  "Esto  perpetua,"  but  as  this 
was  not  to  be,  let  \is  inscribe  upon  its 
tomb,  "Requiescat  In  pace." 


CHAPTER  IX. 

FRITZ     HATHNAUGHT     AND     THE 
PEASANTS'  WAR. 

One  of  the  greatest  struggles  of  a  des- 
pised, oppressed  and  exploited  people  to 
drop  the  burden  from  the  back  and  as- 
sume the  erect  stature  of  freemen,  was 
that  of  Fritz  Hathnaught  in  sixteenth 
century  Germany.  This  "Peasants'  War" 
as  it  is  known  in  history,  started  in  1524, 
spread  rapidly,  and  was  not  suppressed 
untU  1525. 

"The  religious  liberty  preached  by 
Luther,"  says  Menzel  (History  of  Ger- 
many), "was  understood  by  them  as  also 
implying  the  political  freedom  for  which 
they  sighed.  Their  condition  had  greatly 
deteriorated  during  the  past  century. 
The  nobility  had  bestowed  the  chief  part 
of  their  wealth  on  the  church  and  dis- 
sipated the  remainder  at  court.  Luxury 
had  also  greatly  increased,  and  the  peas- 
ant was  consequently  laden  with  feudal 
dues  of  every  description,  to  which  were 
added  their  ill-treatment  by  the  men-at- 
arms  and  mercenaries  maintained  at 
their  expense,  the  damage  done  by  game, 
the  destruction  of  the  crops  by  the  noble 
followers   of   the   chase,   and   finally,    the 

90 


DENNIS   H AT HN AUGHT  91 

extortions  practiced  by  the  new  law-offi- 
ces, the  wearisome  written  proceedings, 
and  the  impoverishment  consequent  on 
lawsuits.  The  German  peasant,  despised 
and  enslaved,  could  no  longer  seek  refuge 
from  the  tyranny  of  his  liege  in  the 
cities,  where  the  reception  of  fresh  sub- 
urbans was  strictly  prohibited,  and 
where  the  citizen,  enervated  by  wealth 
and  luxury,  instead  of  siding  with  the 
peasant,  imitated  the  noble  and  viewed 
him   with   contempt." 

Menzel  enumerates  the  twelve  articles 
that  the  Hathnaughts  wished  to  submit  to 
a  court  of  arbitration,  as  follows:  "First 
— the  right  of  the  peasantry  to  appoint 
their  own  preachers  who  were  to  be  al- 
lowed to  preach  the  word  of  God  from  the 
Bible.  Second — That  the  dues  paid  by 
the  peasantry  were  to  be  abolished  with 
the  exception  of  tithes  ordained  by  God 
for  the  maintenance  of  the  clergy,  the 
surplus  of  which  was  to  be  applied  to 
general  purposes  and  to  the  maintenance 
of  the  poor.  Third — The  abolition  of  vas- 
salage as  iniquitous.  Fourth — The  right 
of  hunting,  fishing  and  fowling.  Fifth — • 
That  of  cutting  wood  In  the  forests. 
Sixth — The  modification  of  socage  and 
average  service.  Seventh — That  the  peas- 
ant should  be  guaranteed  from  the  ca- 
price of  his  lord  by  a  fixed  agreement. 
Eighth — The  modification  of  the  rent 
upon  feudal  lands,  by  which  a  part  of 
the  profit  would  be  secured  to  the  occu- 
pant. Ninth — The  administration  of  jus- 
tice  accoi'ding   to    the    ancient    laws,   not 


92  DENNIS   HATHNAUGIIT 

according  to  the  new  statutes  and  to  ca- 
price. Tenth — The  restoration  of  com- 
munal property,  illegally  seized.  Elev- 
enth— The  abolition  of  dues  on  the  death 
of  a  serf,  by  which  the  widow  and  or- 
phans were  deprived  of  their  right. 
Twelfth — The  acceptance  of  the  afore- 
said articles  or  their  refutation  as  con- 
trary  to    Scripture." 

Although  they  had  named  Luther  as 
a  possible  member  of  a  court  of  arbitra- 
tion, he  refused  to  interfere  in  their  af- 
fairs, dreading,  according  to  Menzel,  the 
insolence  of  the  Hathnaughts  under  the 
guidance  of  Anabaptists  and  enthusiasts. 
He  used  his  utmost  efforts  to  put  down 
the  insurrection,  and  was  accused  by 
Thomas  Munzer,  one  of  the  Hathnaughts, 
of  "deserting  the  cause  of  liberty  and  of 
rendering  the  Reformation  a  fresh  ad- 
vantage for  the  princes,  a  fresh  means 
of  tyranny." 

For  a  time  the  Hathnaughts  had  for  a 
leader,  Goetz  von  Berlichingen,  a  notor- 
ious robber,  who  forms  the  subject  of  a 
drama  by  Goethe,  who  idealizes  the  ban- 
dit and  his  character.  Menzel  describes 
him  as  an  ordinary  highwayman.  He 
had  lost  a  hand  by  a  cannon  shot  and 
In  its  place  had  an  iron  hand. 

When  the  revolt  was  put  down,  "The 
city  of  Wurzburg,"  according  to  Menzel, 
"threw  open  her  gates  to  the  triumphant 
Truchsess  who  held  a  fearful  court  of 
judgment  in  which  the  prisoners  were 
})oheaded  by  his  jester,  Hans."  In  a 
note    to    the    text,    Menzol    adds:       "The 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  93 

peasants  knelt  in  a  row  before  the  Truch- 
sess,  while  Hans  the  Jester,  with  the 
sword  of  execution  in  his  hand,  marched 
up  and  down  behind  them.  The  Truch- 
sess  demanded;  'which  among  them  had 
been  implicated  in  the  revolt?'  None 
acknowledged  the  crime.  'Which  of 
them  had  read  the  Bible?'  Some  said 
yes,  some  no,  and  each  of  those  who  re- 
plied in  the  affirmative  was  instantly  de- 
prived of  his  hea^  by  Hans,  amid  the 
loud  laughter  of  the  squires.  The  same 
fate  befell  those  who  knew  how  to  read 
or  write.  The  priest  of  Schipf,  an  old, 
gouty  man,  who  had  zealously  opposed 
the  peasantry,  had  himself  carried  by 
four  of  his  men  to  the  Truchsess  in  order 
to  receive  the  thanks  of  that  prince  for 
his  services;  but  Hans,  imagining  that 
he  was  one  of  the  rebels,  suddenly  step- 
ping behind  him,  cut  off  his  head.  Upon 
which,  the  Truchsess  relates,  'I  seriously 
reproved  my  good  Hans  for  his  untoward 
jest.' " 

These  butchers  were  fit  ancestors  of 
the  despoilers  of  Belgium.  Menzel  de- 
clares that  in  this  slaughter  of  the  Hath- 
naughts,  which  was  general,  the  spiritual 
princes  surpassed  their  lay  brethren  in 
atrocity.  In  a  later  revolt  of  a  more  re- 
ligious nature  under  Thomas  Munzer, 
which  broke  out  in  Thuringia  In  the 
summer  of  1525,  the  peasants  were  de- 
feated at  Frankenhausen  with  great 
slaughter,  and  Munzer,  found  secreted 
In  a  haystack,  was  put  to  the  rack  and 
executed.      In    all,    more   than    one   hun- 


94  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

dred  thousand  of  the  Hathnaughts  fell  in 
this  terrible  struggle,  and  at  the  end  the 
survivors  were  worse  off  than  ever. 

According  to  Menzel  the  misery  of  the 
Hathnaughts  was  by  no  means  so  great 
during  the  Middle  Ages  as  it  became  af- 
ter the  great  peasant  war  of  1525.  All 
through  the  ages  will  ring  the  wail  of 
the  poor  peasant  boy,  victim  of  oppres- 
sion and  malnutrition,  who  did  not  fear 
death  so  much  as  he  regretted  the  fact 
that  he  never  had  enjoyed  a  good  din- 
ner: "Alas!  Alas!  must  I  die  so  soon, 
and  I  have  scarcely  had  a  bellyful  twice 
in  my  life!" 


CHAPTER  X. 

DENNIS  IN  SIXTEENTH  CENTURY 
ENGLAND. 

Prom  the  Norman  Conquest  to  the  ac- 
cession of  Henry  VIII,  a  period  of  five 
centuries,  Saxon  and  Norman  were 
gradually  disappearing,  and  out  of  the 
great  melting  pot  of  the  nation  there 
came  the  modern  Englishman.  We  have 
seen  how  oppressive  was  the  government 
of  the  Conqueror,  yet  this  very  oppres- 
sion which  aimed  at  the  centralization 
of  authority  in  the  king,  brought  the 
barons  in  self-defence  into  alliance  with 
the  burghers. 

"Thus,"  says  Duruy,  in  chorus  with 
Buckle  and  Bonnemere,  "the  nobles  sav- 
ed their  rights  only  by  securing  those 
of  their  humblest  allies.  In  this  man- 
ner of  agreement  between  the  burgher 
middle  class  and  the  nobles,  English  pub- 
lic liberty  was  founded." 

The  Normans  seemed  more  bent  upon 
robbing  the  people  through  unjust  tax- 
ation than  in  building  up  a  strong  gov- 
ernment with  a  united  people,  speaking 
a  common  language  and  with  a  common 
destiny.  But  insensibly  the  Norman  and 
Saxon  elements  were  fusing;  the  union 
was  hastened  by  the  wresting  of  the 
Magna  Charta  from  King  John  in  1215, 
and  the  poems  of  Chaucer,  and  Wyclif's 

95 


96  DENNIS  H AT HN AUGHT 

translation  of  the  Bible,  blended  the 
current  speech  of  both  races  into  that 
glorious  tong-ue  that  finally  burst  into 
full  splendour  in  the  age  of  Elizabeth. 

When  Henry  VIII  ascended  the  throne 
he  reigned  over  a  genuine  English  peo- 
ple. Old  animosities  had  disappeared, 
and  there  were  few  in  the  nation  that 
could  tell  on  which  side  their  ancestors 
had  fought  at  Hastings. 

James  Anthony  Froude  in  the  first 
chapter  of  his  "History  of  England,"  has 
an  interesting  survey  of  the  social  con- 
dition of  the  Hathnaughts  in  sixteenth 
century  England.  He  treats  in  turn  of 
mediaeval  civilization;  the  encouragement 
of  manufactures;  the  decline  of  the 
towns;  the  feudal  system;  the  distribu- 
tion of  property;  wages  and  prices;  la- 
bour and  capital;  management  of  land; 
the  commercial  spirit;  absorption  of  land 
for  pasturage;  income  of  the  higher 
classes;  clergy  and  laity;  education;  or- 
ganization of  trade;  the  London  Compa- 
nies; handloom  weavers. 

In  the  time  of  Henry  VIII  there  was 
passed  a  statute  for  the  encouragement 
of  the  linen  trade  and  thus  to  bring 
about  the  better  employment  of  the  peo- 
ple. "This  act,"  says  Froude,  "was  de- 
signed immediately  to  keep  wives  and 
children  of  the  poor  in  work  in  their 
own  houses;  but  it  leaves  no  doubt  that 
manufactures  in  England  had  not  of 
themselves  that  tendency  to  self-develop- 
ment which  would  encourage  an  enlarg- 
ing   population.      The    woolen    manufac- 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  97 

tures  similarly  appear,  from  the  many 
statutes  upon  them,  to  have  been  vigor- 
ous at  a  fixed  level,  but  to  have  shown 
no  tendency  to  rise  beyond  that  level. 
With  a  fixed  market  and  a  fixed  demand 
production   continued  uniform." 

Proude  notes  the  general  decay  of  the 
towns  in  1540  during  Henry  VIII's  reign 
and  a  decline  of  manufactures  despite 
statutory  encouragement.  But  he  ex- 
plains this  by  saying  that  the  old  towns 
were  built,  not  for  industry,  but  for  the 
protection  of  property  and  life,  and  as 
the  country  had  become  secure,  one  of 
the  purposes  of  the  towns  was  no  longer 
required.  The  woolen  manufacture  in 
Worcestershire,  he  says,  was  spreading 
into  the  open  country  and  doubtless  into 
other  counties,  too. 

"It  was  in  fact,"  observes  Proude,  "the 
first  symptom  of  the  impending  revolu- 
tion." .  .  .  "This  mighty  change,  how- 
ever, was  long  in  silent  progress  before 
it  began  to  tell  on  the  institutions  of  the 
country.  When  city  burghers  bought 
estates,  the  law  insisted  jealously  on 
their  accepting  with  them  all  the  feudal 
obligations.  Attempts  to  use  the  land  as 
a  'commodity'  were  angrily  repressed; 
while  again,  such  persons  endeavoured,  as 
they  do  at  present,  to  cover  the  recent 
origin  of  their  families  by  adopting  the 
manners  of  the  nobles  instead  of  trans- 
ferring the  habits  of  the  towns  to  the 
parks  and  chases  of  the  English  coun- 
ties. The  old  English  organization  main- 
tained its  full  activity;  and  the  duties  of 


98  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

property  continued  to  be  for  another  cen- 
tury more  considered  than  its  rights." 

Villanage  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII 
had  practically  ceased,  but  Froude  shows 
that  Hathnaught  was  far  from  being  his 
own  master;  nor  might  he  be  idle  or 
leave  his  employment  at  will  or  through 
caprice. 

"Through  all  these  arrangements," 
says  Froude,  "a  single  aim  is  visible; 
that  every  man  in  England  should  have 
his  definite  place  and  definite  duty  as- 
signed to  him,  and  that  no  human  being 
should  be  at  liberty  to  lead  at  his  own 
pleasure  an  unaccountable  existence." 
He  goes  on  to  discuss  the  respective  ad- 
vantages of  large  and  small  estates — 
peasant  proprietary  or  a  constantly  di- 
minishing number  of  wealthy  landlords, 
but  takes  no  sides  himself. 

"Dress,"  he  continues,  "which  now 
scarcely  suffices  to  distinguish  the  mas- 
ter from  his  servant,  was  then  the  sym- 
bol of  rajik,  prescribed  by  statute  to  the 
various  orders  of  society  as  strictly  as 
the  regimental  uniform  to  officers  and 
privates;  diet  was  also  prescribed  and 
with  equal  strictness."  What  was  eaten 
and  the  amount  that  might  be  partaken 
of.  was  duly  set  forth  in  the  law.  There 
was  nothing  in  those  days  that  might 
be  likened  to  the  so-called  "lobster  pal- 
aces" of  Broadway,  New  York. 

"The  state  of  the  working  classes," 
says  Froude,  "can,  however,  be  more 
certainly  determined  by  a  comparison  of 
their  wages  with  the  prices  of  food.  Both 


DENNIS   HATHNAUOHT  99 

were  regulated,  as  far  as  regulation  was 
possible,  by  act  of  parliament,  and  we 
have  therefore  data  of  the  clearest  kind 
by  which  to  judge.  The  majority  of 
agricultural  labourers  lived  in  the  houses 
of  their  employers;  this,  however,  was 
not  the  case  with  all,  and  if  we  can 
satisfy  ourselves  as  to  the  rate  at  which 
those  among  the  poor  were  able  to  live 
who  had  cottages  of  their  own,  we  may 
be  assured  that  the  rest  did  not  live 
worse  at  their  master's  tables." 

Ye  who  rail  against  the  high  cost  of 
living,  give  heed  to  these  prices  fixed 
by  law  and  quoted  by  Froude:  "Beef 
and  pork  were  a  half  penny  a  pound, 
mutton  was  three  farthings.  These  were 
fixed  at  these  prices  by  the  3d  of  the 
24th  of  Henry  VIII."  .  .  .  "The  best 
pig  or  goose  in  a  country  market  could 
be  bought  for  fourpence;  a  good  capon 
for  threepence  or  fourpence;  a  chicken 
for  a  penny;  a  hen  for  twopence."  Froude 
estimates  that  a  penny  in  terms  of  Hath- 
naught's  necessities  must  have  been  near- 
ly equal  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII  to 
the   present   shilling. 

"Turning  then  to  the  table  of  wages," 
he  says,  "it  will  be  easy  to  ascertain  his 
position.  By  the  3d  of  the  6th  of  Henry 
VIII  it  was  enacted  that  master  car- 
penters, masons,  bricklayers,  tylers, 
plumbers,  glaziers,  joiners,  and  other  em- 
ployers of  such  skilled  workmen,  should 
give  to  each  of  their  journeymen,  if 
no  meat  or  drink  was  allowed,  sixpence 
a   day   for   the    half   year,    five   pence    a 


100  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

day  for  the  other  half;  or  five  pence- 
half  penny  for  the  yearly  average.  The 
common  labourers  were  to  receive  four 
pence  a  day  for  half  the  year,  for  the 
remaining  half,  three  pence.  In  the  har- 
vest months  they  were  allowed  to  work 
by  the  piece,  and  might  earn  consider- 
ably more." 

Commenting  upon  this  in  a  foot- 
note and  citing  authorities,  Proude  says: 
"The  wages  were  fixed  at  a  maximum, 
showing  that  labour  was  scarce,  and 
that  its  natural  tendency  was  toward  a 
higher  rate  of  remuneration.  Persons  not 
possessed  of  other  means  of  subsistence 
were  punishable  if  they  refused  to  work 
at  the  statutable  rate  of  payment;  and 
a  clause  in  the  act  of  Henry  VIII  di- 
rected that  where  the  practice  had  been 
to  give  lower  wages,  lower  wages  should 
be  taken.  This  provision  was  owing  to 
a  difference  in  the  value  of  money  in 
different  parts  of  England.  The  price 
of  bread  at  Stratford,  for  instance,  was 
permanently  twenty-five  per  cent,  below 
the  price  in  London."  .  .  .  "In  1581 
the  Agricultural  labourer  as  he  now  ex- 
ists was  only  beginning  to  appear."  .  .  . 
"This  novel  class  had  been  called  into 
being  by  the  general  raising  of  rents, 
and  the  wholesale  eviction  of  the  smaller 
tenantry  which  followed  the  Reforma- 
tion." 

Harrison  in  his  "Description  of  Eng- 
land," quoted  by  Froude,  says  he  knew 
old  men,  who,  comparing  things  present 
with  things     past,  spoke  of  two     things 


I 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  101 

ijrown  to  be  very  grievous — to  wit,  the 
enhancing  of  rents  and  the  daily  oppres- 
sion of  copyholders,  whose  lords  seek 
to  bring  their  poor  tenants  almost  into 
plain  servitude  and  misery,  daily  devis- 
ing new  means,  and  seeking  up  all  the 
old,  how  to  cut  them  shorter  and  short- 
er; doubling,  trebling,  and  now  and  then 
seven  times  increasing  their  fines;  driv- 
ing them  also  for  every  trifle  to  lose  and 
forfeit  their  tenures,  by  whom  the  great- 
est part  of  the  realm  jioth  stand  and  is 
maintained,  to  the  end  they  may  fleece 
them  yet  more;  which  is  a  lamentable 
hearing." 

For  all  his  supposed  advantage  the  la- 
bourer was  not  contented.  "The  wages 
act  of  Henry  VIII,"  says  Froude,  "was 
unpopular  with  the  labourers,  and  was 
held  to  deprive  them  of  an  opportunity 
of  making  better  terms  for  themselves." 
.  .  .  "On  the  one  side  parliament  in- 
terfered to  protect  employers  against 
their  labourers;  but  it  was  equally  de- 
termined that  employers  should  not  be 
allowed  to  abuse  their  opportunities; 
and  this  directly  appears  from  the  4th 
of  the  5th  of  Elizabeth,  by  which,  on  the 
most  trifling  appearance  of  a  deprecia- 
tion in  the  currency,  it  was  declared  that 
the  labouring  man  could  no  longer  live 
on  the  wages  assigned  to  him  by  the  act 
of  Henry;  and  a  sliding  scale  was  in- 
stituted by  which,  for  the  future,  wages 
should  be  adjusted  to  the  price  of  food." 

This  method  of  trying  to  adjust  prices 
to  the  purchasing  power  we  find,  in  "The 


102  DENNI8  HATHNAUGHT 

Common  People  of  Ancient  Rome,"  by- 
Professor  Frank  S.  Abbott,  was  worked 
out  in  the  days  of  Diocletian  301  A.  D. 
It  was  not  a  success,  for  imperial  and 
kingly  edicts  cannot  supplant  the  natural 
laws  of  political  economy.  Professor  Ab- 
bott, following  the  line  of  Froude,  shows 
the  prices  of  different  articles  of  food 
in  the  days  of  Diocletian  and  the  wages 
paid  the  free  labourers. 

Froude,  writing  of  the  towns,  the  trad- 
ing and  manufacturing  classes,  says: 
"The  names  and  shadows  linger  about 
London  of  certain  ancient  societies,  the 
members  of  which  may  still  occasionally 
be  seen  in  quaint  gilt  barges  pursuing 
their  own  difficult  way  among  the  swarm- 
ing steamers;  while  on  certain  days,  the 
traditions  concerning  which  are  fast  dy- 
ing out  of  memory,  the  Fishmongers* 
Company,  the  Goldsmiths'  Company,  the 
Mercers'  Company  make  procession  down 
the  river  for  civic  feasting  at  Greenwich 
or  Blackwall.  The  stately  tokens  of 
ancient  honour  still  belong  to  them,  and 
the  remnants  of  ancient  wealth  and  pa- 
tronage and  power.  Their  charters  may 
be  read  by  curious  antiquaries,  and  the 
bills  of  fare  of  their  ancient  entertain- 
ment. But  for  what  purpose  they  were 
called  into  being,  what  there  was  in  those 
associations  of  common  trades  to  sur- 
round with  gilded  insignia,  and  how  they 
came  to  be  possessed  of  broad  lands  and 
church  preferments,  few  people  now  care 
to  think  or  inquire.  Trade  and  traders 
have  no  dignity  any  more  in  the   eyes 


DENNIS  IIATTINAUGHT  103 

of  anyone,  except  what  money  lends  to 
them;  and  these  outward  symbols  scarce- 
ly rouse  even  a  passing  feeling  of  curi- 
osity. And  yet  these  companies  were 
once  something  more  than  mere  names. 
They  are  all  which  now  remain  of  a  vast 
organization  which  once  penetrated  the 
entire  trading  life  of  England — an  or- 
ganization set  on  foot  to  realize  that  most 
necessary,  if  most  difficult,  condition  of 
commercial  excellence  under  which  man 
shall  deal  faithfully  with  his  brother,  and 
all  wares  offered  for  sale  of  whatever 
kind,  should  honestly  be  what  they  are 
pretended  to   be." 

Under  the  Guild  system,  according  to 
Froude,  no  one  was  permitted  to  supply 
articles  which  he  had  not  been  educated 
to  manufacture;  the  price  at  which  arti- 
cles ought  justly  to  be  sold  was  deter- 
mined; and  care  was  taken  to  see  that 
cloth  put  up  for  sale  was  true  cloth,  of 
true  texture  and  full  weight;  and  so  on 
through  the  list  with  all  other  goods,  in 
the  effort  to  enforce  honest  dealing. 

In  London  a  central  council  sat  for 
every  branch  of  trade  and  this  council 
acted  in  conjunction  with  the  chancellor 
and  the  crown.  The  council  fixed  prices, 
wages,  arranged  rules  of  apprenticeship. 
There  were  searchers  who,  in  companj'' 
with  the  Lord  Mayor,  or  other  official,  in- 
spected the  shops  of  traders.  When  nec- 
essaryj  suggestions  in  reports  submitted 
to  the  state  authorities  by  the  guilds,  not 
infrequently  became  law  through  stat- 
ute enactment. 


104  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

It  was  the  age  of  the  apprentice.  No 
one  might  open  a  trade  or  become  a 
manufacturer  unless  he  had  served  his 
full  apprenticeship. 

There  was  some  notion  of  the  vocation- 
al idea  in  those  days,  for  no  man,  ac- 
cording to  Froude,  might  work  at  a  busi- 
ness for  which  he  was  unfit,  and  the 
state  insisted  on  its  natural  right  that 
thildren  should  not  be  allowed  to  grow 
up  In  idleness,  to  be  returned  at  mature 
age  upon  its  hands. 

Says  Froude:  "The  children  of  those 
who  could  afford  the  small  entrance  fees 
were  apprenticed  to  trades,  the  rest  were 
apprenticed  to  agriculture;  and  if  chil- 
dren were  found  growing  up  idle,  and 
their  fathers  or  their  friends  failed  to 
prove  that  they  were  able  to  secure 
them  an  ultimate  maintenance,  the  may- 
ors in  towns  and  the  magistrates  in  the 
country  had  authority  to  take  possession 
of  such  children,  and  apprentice  them  as 
they  saw  fit,  that  when  they  grew  up 
they  might  not  be  driven  by  want  or  In- 
capacity to  dishonest  courses." 

Froude  observes  that  it  would  be  mad- 
ness to  try  to  apply  to  the  changed  con- 
dition of  the  present  those  trade  regula- 
tions of  the  Plantagenets  and  the  Tudors, 
but  he  suggests  that  it  would  be  well  if 
some  competent  person  made  these  laws 
the  subject  of  a  special  treatise.  Under 
this  iron  discipline  trade  was  regulated 
by  law,  some  of  the  laws  being  salutary, 
but  others  vexatious,  as  in  the  "act 
touching  weavers,"  which,  limiting  weav- 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  105 

ers  living  in  towns  to  two  looms,  tended 
to  prevent  the  cloth  manufacture  from 
falling  into  the  power  of  larye  capitalists 
employing  hands. 

We  complain  of  the  short  weight  gro- 
cer and  the  impure  food  vender,  but  there 
were  such  in  the  days  of  the  much  mar- 
ried Henry  VIII.  We  read  in  Froude  of 
complaints  made  by  the  leather  trade  of 
searchers  who,  for  a  bribe,  aflfixed  their 
seal  to  goods  imperfectly  tanned,  to  the 
great  deceit  of  the  buyers  thereof."  Ex- 
cessive fees  were  often  imposed,  too,  up- 
on apprentices  in  defiance  of  the  law. 
The  custom  of  skinning  your  tribe  is  an 
old  one,  Dennis. 

Toulmin  Smith,  in  his  "English  Guilds," 
traces  the  original  ordinances  of  more 
than  a  hundred  early  English  Guilds. 
Lujo  Brentano  in  a  preliminary  essay 
narrates  the  history  and  development  of 
the  guilds.  This  work  is  held  to  be  the 
standard  authority  on  the  subject.  Bren- 
tano deals  with  the  origin  of  guilds;  re- 
ligious and  social  guilds;  town  guilds  or 
merchant  guilds;  craft  guilds  and  trades- 
unions.  Craft  guilds  are  usually  held  to 
have  been  the  beginnings  of  the  trades- 
unions,  but  they  differed  from  the  mod- 
ern union  in  that  the  membership  in- 
cluded masters.  Ihus  the  guild  might 
act  in  times  of  trouble  as  a  board  of 
arbitration  and  conciliation.  The  guild 
was  really  labour's  first  great  progressive 
stand  against  the  continuance  of  the 
feudal  system  as  shown  in  a  previous 
chapter. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

DENNIS  IN  SETENTEENTH  CEN- 
TURY ENGLAND. 

Macaulay's  History  of  England  shall 
De  our  authority,  for  the  industrial  his- 
tory of  Merrie  England  in  the  Seven- 
teenth Century.  His  brilliant  work  con- 
tains but  a  few  pages  concerning  the 
actual  life  of  the  Hathnaughts,  but  this 
Is  because  of  the  scantiness  of  the  ma- 
terials. 

"The  most  numerous  class,"  he  says, 
"is  precisely  the  class  respecting  which 
we  have  the  most  meager  information. 
In  those  times  philanthropists  did  not  yet 
regard  it  as  a  sacred  duty,  nor  had  dema- 
gogues yet  found  it  a  lucrative  trade  to 
talk  and  write  about  the  distress  of  the 
labourer.  History  was  too  much  occu- 
pied with  courts  and  camps  to  spare  a 
line  for  the  hut  of  the  peasant  or  the 
garret  of  the  mechanic.  The  press  now 
often  sends  forth  in  a  day  a  greater 
quantity  of  discussion  and  declamation 
about  the  condition  of  the  working  man 
than  was  published  during  the  twenty- 
eight  years  which  elapsed  between  the 
Restorg,tion   and   the   Revolution.     .     .     . 

"The    great   criterion   of    the    state    of 

106 


DENNIS  HATHNAUOHT  107 

the  common  people  is  the  amount  of 
their  wages;  and  as  four-fifths  of  the 
common  people  were,  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  employed  In  agriculture,  it  is 
especially  important  to  ascertain  what 
were  the  wages  of  agricultural  industry. 
...  Sir  William  Petty  (Political  Arith- 
metic), whose  mere  assertion  carries 
great'  weight,  informs  us  that  a  labourer 
was  by  no  means  in  the  lowest  state  who 
received  for  a  day's  work  four-pence 
with  food  or  eight-pence  without  food. 
Four  shillings  a  week  therefore  were, 
according  to  Petty's  calculation,  fair  agri- 
cultural wages.    .    .    . 

"About  the  beginning  of  the  year  1685 
the  justices  of  Warwickshire,  in  the 
exercise  of  a  power  entrusted  to  them 
by  an  Act  of  Elizabeth,  fixed,  at  their 
quarter  sessions,  a  scale  of  wages  for 
the  county,  and  notified  that  every  em- 
ployer who  gave  more  than  the  author- 
ized sum,  and  every  working  man  who 
received  more,  would  be  liable  to  pun- 
ishment." 

In  some  places  the  Hathnaijghts  were 
more  favoured,  and  Macaulay  cites  Rich- 
ard Dunning,  a  gentleman  of  Devonshire, 
as  authority  for  the  statement  that  the 
wages  of  the  Devonshire  Dennis  were,  in 
1685,  without  food,  five  shillings  a  week. 
In  the  neighbourhood  of  Bury  Saint  Ed- 
munds, Macaulay  asserts,  conditions  were 
even  better,  for  the  magistrates  of  Suf- 
folk in  the  spring  of  1682  decreed  that 
where  a  Hathnaught  was  not  boarded  he 
should    have    five    shillings    a    week    in 


103  DENNIS  IIATIINAVGHT 

winter  and  six  in  summer.  In  1661  the 
justices  of  Chelmsford  fixed  the  wages 
of  Essex  Hathnaughts  who  were  not 
boarded,  at  six  shillings  in  winter  and 
seven  in  summer. 

Macaulay  points  out  that  In  the  years 
in  which  this  order  was  made,  necessaries 
of  life  were  immoderately  dear.  "Wheat 
was  at  seventy  shillings  the  quarter, 
which  would  even  now  be  considered  as 
almost  a  famine  price."    .    .    . 

The  average  wage  of  his  own  day,  Ma- 
caulay observes,  was  very  much  higher, 
and  in  prosperous  counties  the  weekly 
wages  of  Hathnaughts  engaged  in  farm 
work  amounted  to  twelve,  fourteen,  and 
even  sixteen  shillings.  He  continues: 
"The  remuneration  of  workmen  em- 
ployed in  manufactures  has  always  been 
higher  than  that  of  tillers  of  the  soil. 
In  the  year  1680,  a  member  of  the  House 
of  Commons  remarked  that  tTie  high 
wages  paid  in  this  country  made  it  im- 
possible for  our  textures  to  maintain  a 
competition  with  the  produce  of  the  In- 
dian looms.  An  English  mechanic,  he 
said,  instead  of  slaving  like  a  native  of 
IJengal  for  a  piece  of  copper,  exacted  a 
shilling  a  day." 

Because  of  the  inattention  formerly 
paid  to  the  Hathnaughts,  a  ^eat  deal 
of  their  history,  Macaulay  says,  may  be 
learned  only  from  the  ballads.  One  of 
the  most  remarkable  of  the  popular  lays 
chaunted  about  the  streets  of  Norwich 
and  Tweeds  in  the  time  of  Charles  tho 
►Second,   may   still   be   read,   as  it   is  pre- 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  109 

served  in  the  British  Museum.  This  bal- 
lad, which  is  described  as  "the  vehement 
and  bitter  cry  of  labour  against  capital," 
tells  of  the  "good  old  times  when  every 
artisan  employed  in  the  woolen  manu- 
facture lived  as  well  as  a  farmer.  But 
those  times  are  past.  Sixpence  a  day 
was  now  all  that  could  be  earned  by  hard 
labour  at  the  loom.  If  the  poor  com- 
plained that  they  could  not  live  on  such 
a  pittance,  they  were  told  that  they  were 
free  to  take  it  or  leave  it.  For  so  miser- 
able a  recompense  were  the  producers 
of  wealth  compelled  to  toil,  rising  early 
and  lying  down  late,  while  the  master 
clothier,  eating,  sleeping,  and  idling,  be- 
came rich  by  their  exertions." 

It  may  be  remarked  here,  that  the  bal- 
lad is  really  the  battle  hymn  of  the 
Hathnaughts.  In  all  ages,  in  rude  verse, 
the  Hathnaughts  have  poured  out  their 
souls  in  complaints  against  the  bitter 
and  unequal  struggle  for  existence,  and 
a  history  of  this  ballad  Influence  on  the 
thought  of  the  humble  would  make  an 
instructive  and  illuminating,  as  well 
as  an  entertaining,  chapter  in  a  history 
of  the  industrial  life. 

Macaulay  has  this  reference  to  child 
labour:  "It  may  here  be  noticed  that  the 
practice  of  setting  children  prematurely 
to  work,  a  practice  which  the  State,  the 
legitimate  protector  of  those  who  can- 
not protect  themselves,  has,  in  our  time, 
wisely  and  humanely  interdicted,  pre- 
vailed in  the  seventeenth  century  to  an 
extent   which,   when   compared  with  the 


110  DENNIS  H AT HN AUGHT 

extent  of  the  manufacturing  system, 
seems  almost  incredible.  At  Norwich,  the 
chief  seat  of  the  clothing  trade,  a  little 
creature  of  six  years  old  was  thought 
fit  for  labour.  Several  writers  of  that 
time,  and  among  them  some  who  were 
considered  as  eminently  benevolent,  men- 
tion, with  exultation,  the  fact  that  in 
that  single  city,  boys  and  girl?  of  very 
tender  age  created  wealth  exceeding  what 
was  necessary  for  their  own  subsistence 
by  twelve  thousand  pounds  a  year.  The 
more  carefully  we  examine  the  history 
of  the  past,  the  more  reason  shall  we  find 
to  dissent  from  those  who  imagine  that 
our  age  has  been  fruitful  of  new  social 
evils.  The  truth  is  that  the  evils  are, 
with  scarcely  an  exception,  old.  That 
which  is  new  is  the  intelligence  which 
discerns  and  the  humanity  which  reme- 
dies them." 

Let  us  commend  this  observation  to 
amateur  sociologists  and  moral  tinkers 
of  our  time  who  would  have  us  believe 
we  are  going  to  Hell  so  fast  that  the 
lirakes  won't  work. 

Pursuing  the  history  of  the  Hath- 
naughts  further,  Macaulay  says:  "Dur- 
ing several  generations,  the  Commission- 
ers of  Greenwich  Hospital  have  kept  a 
register  of  the  wages  paid  to  different 
classes  of  worKmeu  who  have  been  cm- 
ployed  in  the  repairs  of  the  building. 
From  this  valuable  record  it  appears  that, 
in  the  course  of  a  hundred  and  twenty 
years,  the  daily  earnings  of  the  brick- 
layer have  risen  from   half  a  crown   to 


DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT  111 

four  and  ten  pence,  those  of  the  mason 
from  a  crown  to  five  and  three  pence, 
those  of  the  carpenter  from  half  a  crown 
to  five  and  five  pence,  and  those  of  the 
plumber  from  three  shillings  to  five  and 
six  pence. 

"It  seems  clear,  therefore,  that  the 
wages  of  labour,  estimated  in  money, 
were,  in  1685,  not  more  than  half  of 
what  they  now  are;  and  there  were  few 
articles  important  to  the  workingman 
of  which  the  price  .was  not,  in  1685,  more 
than  half  of  what  it  now  is.  Beer  was 
undoubtedly  much  cheaper  in  that  age 
than  at  present.  Meat  was  also  cheaper, 
but  was  still  so  dear  that  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  families  scarcely  knew  the 
taste  of  it." 

In  this  connection  he  cites  King's 
"Natural  and  Political  Conclusions,"  in 
which,  he  says,  it  is  roughly  estimated 
the  common  people  of  England  in  that 
day  numbered  880,000  families;  of  these 
families,  according  to  King,  440,000  ate 
animal  food  twice  a  week.  The  remain- 
ing 440,000  ate  it  not  at  all  or  at  most 
not  oftener  than  once  a  week.  The  ma- 
jority, Macaulay  says,  lived  on  rye,  bar- 
ley, and  oats.  We  may  profitably  com- 
pare this  with  Froude's  description  of 
the  Hathnaughts  in  the  preceding  cen- 
tury. 

Below  the  labourers,  as  in  the  present 
day,  was  the  class  that  couid  not  live 
without  some  aid  from  the  parish.  In 
our  own  day  we  learn  from  British  blue 
books    and    economic    writers,    that    one 


112  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

Hathnaught  in  every  thirty-seven  in  Eng- 
land and  Wales  receives  some  measure 
of  relief  from  the  funds,  and  that  in 
London  the  ratio  is  one  in  thirty-two.  In 
1685,  according  to  Gregory  King,  as  cited 
by  Macaulay,  the  number  of  inhabitants 
of  England  who  received  relief  consti- 
tuted one-fourth  of  the  population. 

"And  this  estimate,"  says  Macaulay, 
"which  all  our  respect  for  his  authority 
will  scarcely  prevent  us  from  calling  ex- 
travagant, was  pronounced  by  Davenant 
eminently  judicious."  King  and  Daven- 
ant estimated  the  paupers  and  beggars 
in  1696  to  number  1,330,000,  out  of  a 
population  of  5,500,000,  an  amazing  pro- 
portion. 

Macaulay  touches  upon  the  difficulties 
of  reaching  markets  owing  to  the 
wretched  state  of  the  means  of  trans- 
portation. "The  market  place  which  the 
rustic  can  now  reach  with  his  cart  in 
an  hour  was,  a  hundred  and  sixty  years 
ago,  a  day's  journey  from  him,"  says 
Macaulay.  "The  street  which  now  affords 
to  the  artisan,  during  the  whole  night,  a 
secure,  convenient,  and  a  brilliantly- 
lighted  walk  was,  a  hundred  and  sixty 
years  ago,  so  dark  after  sunset  that  he 
would  not  have  been  able  to  see  his 
hand,  so  ill-paved  that  he  would  have 
run  constant  risk  of  breaking  his  neck, 
and  so  ill-watched  that  he  would  have 
been  In  imminent  danger  of  being 
knocked  down  and  plundered  of  his 
small   earnings." 


DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT  113 

Macaulay  draws  attention  at  this  point 
to  the  wretched  state  of  medicine  and 
surgery  in  that  day,  declaring  that  bri de- 
layers and  chimney  sweepers  of  to-day 
who  may  be  injured  can  have  treatment 
in  hospitals  that  gr^at  lords  like  Ormond 
could  not  purchase  in  the  seventeenth 
century. 

In  those  days,  too,  he  observes,  work- 
men and  wives  had  the  common  experi- 
ence of  ill  treatment.  "The  discipline 
of  workshops,  of  schools,  of  private  fami- 
lies, though  not  more  efficient  than  at 
present,  was  infinitely  harsher,"  he  adds. 
"Masters,  well  born  and  bred,  were  in 
the  habit  of  beating  their  servants.  Peda- 
gogues knew  of  no  way  of  imparting 
knowledge  but  by  beating  their  pupils. 
Husbands  of  decent  station  were  not 
ashamed  to  beat  their  wives. 

"The  implacability  of  hostile  factions 
was  such  as  we  can  scarcely  conceive. 
Whigs  were  disposed  to  murmur  because 
Stafford  was  suffered  to  die  without  see- 
ing his  bowels  burned  before  his  face. 
Tories  reviled  and  insulted  Russell  as 
his  coach  passed  from  the  Tower  to  the 
scaffold  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields.  As  little 
mercy  was  shown  by  the  populace  to 
sufferers  of  a  humbler  rank.  If  an  of- 
fender was  put  into  the  pillory,  it  was 
well  if  he  escaped  with  life  from  the 
shower  of  brickbats  and  paving  stones. 
If  he  was  tied  to  the  cart's  tail  the 
crowd  pressed  round  him,  imploring  the 
hangman  to  give  it  the  fellow  well  and 
make  him  howl. 


114  DENNIS  HATHNAUOHT 

"Gentlemen  arranged  parties  of  plea- 
sure to  Bridewell  on  court  days,  for  the 
purpose  of  seeing  the  wretched  women, 
who  beat  hemp  there,  whipped.  A  man 
pressed  to  death  for  refusing  to  plead, 
a  woman  burned  for  coining,  excited  less 
sympathy  than  is  now  felt  for  a  galled 
horse  or  an  overdriven  ox." 

Canting  Englishmen  of  to-day  who 
would  have  you  believe  their  country  the 
sole  custodian  of  all  the  virtues,  and 
their  statesmen  the  high  priests  of  civil- 
ization; who  love  to  dilate  upon  the 
horrors  of  life  under  the  Roman  Em- 
pire, and  of  the  cruelties  of  the  Reign 
of  Terror  during  the  French  Revolution, 
can  find  plenty  of  parallels  to  these  in 
their  own  country.  We  are  told  by  vari- 
ous authorities  that  about  70,000  persons 
were  executed  during  the  reign  of  Henry 
VIII,  including  two  of  the  old  monster's 
wives,  and  it  would  not  be  hard  to  prove 
that  more  people  suffered  death  in  Eng- 
land for  trivial  offences  than  met  a  like 
fate  during  the  whole  course  of  the 
French  Revolution. 

"Woe  to  the  man,"  says  Rousseau  In 
his  "Political  Economy,"  which  forms 
part  of  the  literature  of  the  French  Rev- 
olution, "who  has  a  pretty  daughter  and 
a  powerful  neighbour."  The  same  was 
true  of  Merrie  England  for  many  ages 
and  even  down  to  our  time.  Fielding's 
"lom  Jones,"  in  the  person  of  Molly 
Seagrim,  shows  us  that  the  peasant's 
daughter  was  regarded  as  a  morsel  for 
the   gentry,    and    Mrs.    Lynn    Linton,   In 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  115 

an  article  on  George  Eliot  in  a  work 
called  "Women  Novelists  of  the  Reign 
of  Victoria,"  declares  that  even  down 
to  her  own  day  it  was  common  for  peas- 
ant girls  to  have  children  by  the  squire's 
son,  and  such  children  were  not  frowned 
upon  as  they  are  in  our  more  enlight- 
ened twentieth  century. 

Sports  of  England  up  to  a  recent  date 
were  brutal  in  the  extreme,  and  ancient 
Rome  scarcely  surpassed  them  in  cruelty. 
Macaulay  declares  that  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  "multitudes  assembled  to  see 
gladiators  hack  each  other  to  pieces  with 
deadly  weapons,  and  shouted  with  delight 
when  one  of  the  combatants  lost  a  An- 
ger or  an  eye." 

"The  prisons,"  he  continues,  "were  hells 
on  earth,  seminaries  of  every  crime  and 
of  every  disease.  At  the  assizes  the 
lean  and  yellow  culprits  brought  with 
them  from  their  cells  to  the  dock  an 
atmosphere  of  stench  and  pestilence 
which  sometimes  avenged  them  signally 
on  the  bench,  bar,  and  jury.  But  on  all 
this  misery  society  looked  with  profound 
indifference.  Nowhere  could  be  found 
that  sensitive  and  restless  compassion 
which  has,  in  our  time,  extended  a  pow- 
erful protection  to  the  factory  child,  to 
the  Hindoo  widow,  to  the  negro  slave, 
which  pries  into  the  stores  and  water- 
casks  of  every  emigrant  ship,  which 
winces  at  every  lash  laid  on  the  back 
of  a  drunken  soldier,  which  will  not 
suffer  the  thief  in  the  hulks  to  be  ill-fed 
or  overworked,  and  which  has  repeatedly 


116  DENNIS  n AT HN AUGHT 

endeavoured   to   save   the  life   even   of  a 
murderer." 

Here  we  see  the  ceaseless  and  inevit- 
able working  out  of  the  laws  of  prog- 
ress— the  softening  of  human  emotions 
as  we  get  further  and  further  from  the 
jungle  and  nearer  and  nearer  the  Age 
of  Service,  when  men  shall  clasp  hands 
as  brothers,  and  work  together  for  the 
common  good.  All  honour  to  the  noble 
Englishmen  who  have  laboured  for  the 
new  order,  and  who  at  this  very  moment 
in  the  British  Parliament,  the  greatest 
stronghold  of  Privilege,  are  doing  a 
mighty  work  for  human  freedom. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

DENNIS  AND  THE  INDUSTRIAL  RET- 
OLUTION. 

In  the  annals  of  progress  the  eigh- 
teenth century  might  be  called  the  Kin- 
dergarten of  the  Future,  for  it  was  a 
hundred  years  of  the  sowing  of  new  ideas 
that  it  will  take  other  centuries  to  reap 
and  garner. 

It  is  always  a  temptation  to  those  that 
write  of  this  fascinating  age  to  discourse 
upon  the  progress  of  manners — the 
coarseness  and  vulgarity  of  the  life  and 
speech  of  the  higher  classes;  the  lack  of 
refinement  even  in  the  clergy;  the  pur- 
suit of  women  by  the  rakes  and  beaux  of 
the  times;  the  practical  joking  of  the 
men  about  town;  the  dangers  of  streets 
and  highways  because  of  the  numerous 
bands  of  Mohocks  and  highwaymen ;  the 
heavy  hand  of  justice  upon  even  the 
lightest  offences  which  could  send  little 
children  to  the  scaffold  for  the  pettiest 
kind  of  petty  larcenies;  the  horrors  and 
promiscuity  of  prison  life  that  huddled 
murderers,  highwaymen,  harlots,  poor 
debtors,  and  even  women  and  children, 
together,  without  a  thought  of  the  dan- 
ger  of   contamination   or   caring   for   the 

117 


118  DENNIS  HATHNAVGHT 

physical  or  spiritual  comfort  of  the  un- 
fortunates. 

It  was  an  age  of  high  swearing,  gam- 
bling, drunkenness,  duelling,  and  indul- 
gence in  brutish  sports.  The  country- 
squire  as  a  rule  had  the  manners  of  a 
prize  fighter,  and  the  mass  of  the  people 
lived  in  misery  and  degradation. 

Yet  it  was  essentially  an  age  of  ideas, 
when  men  of  all  classes  were  revolting 
against  the  standards  of  their  times.  It 
is  because  of  this  revolt  and  the  ideas 
scattered  by  the  social  insurgents  that 
we  no  longer  have  Squire  Westerns,  Par- 
son TruUibers,  imprisonment  for  debt, 
private  madhouses,  where  it  was  easy  to 
incarcerate  inconvenient  relatives  who 
were  slow  in  dying,  or  streets  so  danger- 
ous that  a  Sir  Roger  De  Coverley  must 
needs  provide  himself  with  a  body-guard 
when  he  goes  to  a  place  of  entertain- 
ment. 

Its  close  was  marked  by  the  success- 
ful issue  of  the  American  and  French 
Revolutions,  and  by  a  demand  for  politi- 
cal rights  on  the  part  of  the  British  peo- 
ple that  is  working  out  the  present  eco- 
nomic destiny  of  the  United  Kingdom. 
But,  from  the  viewpoint  of  the  Hath- 
naughts,  the  most  interesting  and  sig- 
nificant event  of  the  Eighteenth  Century 
was  the  Industrial  Revolution,  when  do- 
mestic labour  began  to  be  replaced  by 
the  factory  system  and  machinery. 

Like  all  things  worth  while,  the  In- 
dustrial Revolution  was  not  conceived  by 
some  genius  over  night  and  put  In  full 


DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT  119 

force  the  next  morning.  It  was  of  slow- 
growth,  going  back,  indeed,  to  the  third 
Edward,  whom  Hallam  (Middle  Ages) 
calls  the  father  of  English  commerce.  It 
was  this  Edward  who,  in  1331,  "took  ad- 
vantage of  the  discontent  among  the 
manufacturers  of  Flanders  to  invite  them 
as  settlers  into  his  dominions,"  according 
to  Hallam.  It  was  during  this  reign,  too, 
Hallam  tells  us,  that  industry  acquired  a 
measure  of  respect,  so  that  a  merchant 
got  on  a  footing  somewhat  equal  to  that 
of  a  landed  proprietor.  This  change  had 
an  Important  effect  on  the  matter  of  ■ 
dress. 

"By  the  Statute  of  Appeal  in  37  Ed- 
ward III,"  Hallam  observes,  "merchants 
and  artificers  who  had  five  hundred 
pounds'  value  in  goods  and  chattels  might 
use  the  same  dress  as  squires  of  one 
hundred  pounds  a  year.  All  those  who 
were  worth  more  than  this  might  dress 
like   men   of   double   that   estate." 

It  is  a  safe  wager  that  this  law  boomed 
the  tailoring  business,  for  it  is  not  in 
human  nature  to  resist  the  temptation  to 
climb  socially,  especially  when  a  king 
deigns  to  give  you  a  friendly  boost. 

In  Arnold  Toynbee's  "Industrial  Revo- 
lution," we  trace  the  development  of  the 
factory  system  in  England.  In  a  chapter 
on  "Manufactures  and  Trades"  he  deals 
with  the  histori'  of  the  woolen,  iron,  cot- 
ton, hardware,  and  hosiery  trades  in 
eighteenth-century  England.  The  woolen 
trade,  he  says,  probably  existed  in  Eng- 
land from  an  early  date,  and  he  notes  a 
mention  of  it  in  a  law  of  1224. 


120  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

"In  1331,"  observes  Toynbee,  following 
Hallam,  "John  Kennedy  brought  the  art 
of  weaving  woolen  cloth  from  Flanders 
into  England,  and  received  the  protection 
of  the  king,  who  at  the  same  time  invited 
over  fullers  and  dyers.  There  is  extant 
a  petition  of  the  worsted  weavers  and 
merchants  of  Norwich  to  Edward  III  in 
1348.  ...  In  1402  the  manufacture 
was  settled  to  a  great  extent  in  and  near 
London,  but  it  gradually  shifted,  owing  to 
the  high  price  of  labour  and  provisions 
to  Surrey,  Kent,  Essex,  Berkshire,  and 
Oxfordshire,  and  afterward  still  further 
into  the  counties  of  Dorset,  Wilts,  Somer- 
set, Gloucester,  and  even  as  far  as  York- 
shire." 

The  cotton  trade  had  so  insignificant  a 
beginning  in  England,  according  to  Toyn- 
bee,  as  to  be  mentioned  only  once,  and 
that  incidentally,  by  Adam  Smith.  It  was 
confined  to  Lancashire,  where  its  head- 
quarters were  Manchester  and  Bolton. 
In  1760  not  more  than  40,000  persons 
were  engaged  in  It. 

Toynbee  finds  the  hardware  trade 
growing  up  about  Sheffield  and  Birming- 
ham, the  latter  town  employing  more 
than   50,000  in   that  industry   in   1727. 

The  hosiery  trade,  too,  Toynbee,  de- 
clares, was  in  its  infancy  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century.  By  1800  the  manufac- 
ture of  silk  ho.siery  had  centred  in  Der- 
by, woolen  ho.siery  in  Leicester,  though 
Nottingham  had  not  yet  absorbed  the  cot- 
ton hosiery  trade.  At  the  beginning  of 
the  century  there  were  14,000  looms  in 
all  the  British  islands. 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  121 

Linen,  he  notes,  was  an  ancient  manu- 
facture in  England,  and  had  been  intro- 
duced into  Dundee  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  It  was  the  chief  manufacture 
of  Ireland,  where  it  had  been  introduced 
by  French  Huguenots,  who  had  settled 
there  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. 

"The  machines  used  in  the  cotton  man- 
ufacture," says  Baines,  in  his  "History  of 
the  Cotton  Manufacture,"  as  quoted  by 
Toynbee,  "were  up  to  the  year  1760  near- 
ly as  simple  as  those  of  India;  though 
the  loom  was  more  strongly  and  perfect- 
ly constructed,  and  cards  for  combing  the 
cotton  had  been  adopted  from  the  woolea 
manufacture,  none  but  the  strong  cottons 
such  as  fustian  and  dimities  were  as  yet 
made  in  England,  and  for  these  the  de- 
mand must  always  have  been  limited." 

"In  173S,"  Toynbee  adds,  "John  Wyatt 
invented  spinning  by  rollers,  but  the  dis- 
covery never  proved  profitable.  In  1760 
the  manufacturer  of  Lancashire  began  to 
use  the  flag  shuttle.  Calico  printing  was 
already   largely   developed. 

"The  reason  why  division  of  labour  was 
carried  out  to  so  small  an  extent  and  in- 
vention so  rare  and  so  little  regarded,  is 
given  by  Adam  Smith  himself.  Division 
of  labour,  as  he  points  out,  is  limited  by 
the  extent  of  the  market,  and  owing  to 
bad  means  of  communication  the  market 
for  English  manufactures  was  still  a  very 
narrow  one.  Yet  England,  however  slow 
the  development  of  her  manufactures,  ad- 
vanced,   nevertheless,    more    rapidly      in 


122  DENNIS  HATHNAVGHT 

this  respect  than  other  nations.  One 
great  secret  of  her  progress  lay  in  the 
facilities  for  water  carriage  afforded  by 
her  rivers,  for  all  communication  by  land 
was  still  in  the  most  neglected  condition. 
A  second  cause  was  the  absence  of  in- 
ternal customs  barriers  such  as  existed 
in  France  and  in  Prussia  until  Stein's 
time.  The  home  trade  of  England  was 
absolutely  free.     .     .     . 

"When  we  turn  to  investigate  the  in- 
dustrial organization  of  the  time  we  find 
that  the  class  of  capitalist  employers  was 
as  yet  but  in  its  infancy.  A  large  part 
of  our  goods  were  still  produced  on  the 
domestic  system.  Manufactures  were  lit- 
tle concentrated  in  towns,  and  only  par- 
tially separated  from  agriculture.  The 
manufacturer  was  literally  the  man  who 
worked  with  his  own  hands  in  his  own 
cottage.  Nearly  the  whole  cloth  trade  of 
the  West  Riding,  for  Instance,  was  or- 
ganized on  this  system  at  the  beginning 
of  the  century. 

"An  important  feature  in  the  indus- 
trial organization  of  the  time  was  the  ex- 
istence of  a  number  of  small  master-man- 
ufacturers, who  were  entirely  inde|||nd- 
ent,  having  capital  and  land  of  their  own, 
for  they  combined  the  culture  of  small 
freehold  pasture-farms  with  their  handi- 
craft. Defoe  (Defoe's  Tour)  has  left  an 
interesting   picture  of  their  life. 

"This  system,  however,  was  no  longer 
universal  in  Arthur  Young's  time  (North- 
ern Tour).  That  writer  found  at  Shef- 
field a  silk-mill  employing  one  hundred 


DENNIS  HATHNAUOHT  123 

and  fifty-two  hands,  including  women  and 
children;  at  Darlington,  one  master-man- 
ufacturer employed  above  fifty  looms;  at 
Boynton  there  were  one  hundred  and  fifty 
hands  in  one  factory. 

"So,  too,  in  the  west  of  England  cloth- 
trade  the  germs  of  the  capitalist  system 
were  visible.  The  rich  merchant  gave 
out  work  to  labourers  in  the  surround- 
ing villages,  who  were  his  employees,  aruJ 
were  not  independent.  In  the  Notting- 
ham hosiery  trade  there  were  in  1750 
fifty  manufacturers  known  as  putters-out 
who  employed  twelve  hundred  frames; 
in  Leicestershire  eighteen  hundred  frames 
were  so  employed.  In  the  hand-made 
nail  business  of  Staffordshire  and  Wor- 
cestershire the  merchant  had  warehouses 
in  different  parts  of  the  district,  and  gave 
out  nail  rods  to  the  nail-master  sufficient 
for  a  week's  work  for  him  and  his  fam- 
ily. 

"In  Lancashire  we  can  trace  step  by 
step  the  growth  of  the  capitalist  employ- 
er. At  first  we  see,  as  in  Yerkshire,  the 
weaver  furnishing  himself  with  warp  and 
weft,  which  he  worked  up  in  his  own 
house  and  brought  himself  to  market.  By 
degrees  he  found  it  diflicult  to  get  yarn 
from  the  spinners;  so  the  merchants  at 
Manchester  gave  him  out  linen  warp  and 
raw  cotton,  and  the  weaver  became  de- 
pendent on  them.  Finally  the  merchant 
would  get  together  thirty  or  forty  looms 
in  a  town.  This  was  the  nearest  ap- 
proach to  the  capitalist  system  before  th& 
great   mechanical   inventions." 


124  DENNIS  n AT HN AUGHT 

Toynbee  describes  the  great  fairs,  where 
a  large  part  of  the  inland  traffic  was 
carried  on,  and  which  were  still  almost 
as  important  as  in  the  Middle  Ages.  The 
most  famous  of  all  was  the  fair  at  Stur- 
bridge,  to  which  goods  were  brought  on 
pack-horses.  There  were  also  great  fairs 
at  Lynn,  Boston,  Gainsborough,  and  Bev- 
erly. 

In  ancient  Rome  (Fowler's  Social  Life 
at  Rome  in  the  Age  of  Cicero)  there  was 
a  good  banking  system,  conducted  by  the 
Argentarii.  The  Argentarius  took  money 
for  deposit  on  interest,  and  there  were 
bills  of  exchange,  letters  of  credit,  and 
something  conforming  to  our  check.  Yet 
in  the  Middle  Ages  merchants  and  man- 
ufacturers were  hampered  by  the  ab- 
sence of  banks  and  a  good  system  of  ex- 
change. Even  in  the  eighteenth  century 
ready  cash  was  essential,  for  banking, 
Toynbee  says,  was  little  developed.  "The 
Bank  of  England  existed,"  he  continues, 
"but  before  1759  issued  no  notes  of  less 
value  than  twenty  pounds.  By  a  law 
of  1709,  no  other  bank  of  more  than  six 
partners  was  allowed;  and  in  1750,  ac- 
cording to  Burke,  there  were  not  more 
than  twelve  bankers'  shops  out  of  Lon- 
don. The  Clearing  House  was  not  estab- 
lished till  1775." 

So  isolated  were  some  districts  that  at 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century 
the  Yorkshire  yeoman,  according  to  Rob- 
ert Southey,  as  told  in  "The  Doctor"  and 
quoted  by  Toynbee,  was  ignorant  of 
sugar,  potatoes,  and  cotton,  and  the  Cum- 


DENNIii  HATHNAUQHT  125 

berland  dalesman,  as  appears  in  Words- 
worth's "Guide  to  the  Lakes,"  lived  en- 
tirely on  the  produce  of  his  farm. 

"It  was  the  domestic  system,"  says 
Toynbee,  "which  the  great  Socialist  writ- 
ers, Sismondi  and  Lassalle,  had  in  their 
minds  when  they  Inveighed  against  the 
modern  organization  of  industry.  Those 
who  lived  under  it,  they  pointed  out, 
though  poor,  were  on  the  whole  prosper- 
ous; over-production  was  absolutely  im- 
possible." 

What  is  true  of  England  is  true  of  the 
beginnings  of  trade  everywhere.  But 
what  a  change  had  been  wrought  in  the 
time  of  Napoleon,  when  British  trade  had 
developed  to  such  an  extent  that  the  Cor- 
sican  bandit  referred  to  the  tight  little 
island  as  a  "nation  of  shopkeepers." 

Since  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
century  the  invention  of  labour-saving 
machinery  has  completely  revolutionized 
manufacturing  industries,  not  only  in 
England,  but  throughout  the  world.  These 
inventions,  which  have  proved  great 
blessings  to  labour,  have  always  been 
fought  by  the  Hathnaughts,  particularly 
trades-unionists,  and  even  in  our  own  day 
labour-saving  devices  and  implements 
are  as  bitterly  opposed  as  in  the  days  of 
Arkwright  and  the  spinning  jenny. 

This  hostile  attitude  of  ignorant  labour 
toward  the  very  implements  that  are 
hastening  the  day  of  proletarian  eman- 
cipation, is  well  set  forth  in  Charles 
Reade's  novel  "Put  Yourself  in  His 
Place."     In  this  work  we  see  the  violent 


126  DENNIS  HATHNAUOHT 

opposition  that  met  Henry  Little's  experi- 
ments with  inventions,  even  to  the  extent 
of  endangering  life  and  property,  some- 
thing after  the  manner  of  the  MacNa- 
maras  of  our  own  times.  One  great  re- 
sult of  the  introduction  of  machinery  and 
the  development  of  science  has  been  to 
diversify  labour.  There  are  to-day  many 
hundreds  of  different  ways  of  making  a 
living  that  were  not  known  in  Shake- 
speare's day.  Even  such  a  simple  thing 
as  the  souvenir  post  card  gives  work  to 
thousands. 

It  is  a  disputed  question,  however, 
among  economists  whether  the  Industrial 
Revolution  has  been  an  unmixed  blessing 
to  labour.  There  seems  to  be  a  law,  as 
John  G.  Lockhart  points  out  in  his  "His- 
tory of  Napoleon  Buonaparte,"  comment- 
ing upon  the  effects  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution and  of  Napoleon's  career  upon  the 
world,  "that  violent  and  sudden  changes 
in  the  structure  of  social  and  political 
order  have  never  yet  occurred  without 
inflicting  utter  misery  upon  at  least  one 
generation." 

The  Industrial  Revolution  had  its  trag- 
edies. Before  the  enactment  of  the  Fac- 
tory Acts,  the  Hathnaughts,  men,  women, 
and  children,  were  at  the  mercy  of  un- 
scrupulous capitalists.  Gibbins,  In  his 
"Industrial  History  of  England,"  declares 
that  it  was  "not  until  the  wages  of  the 
workmen  had  been  reduced  to  a  starva- 
tion level  that  they  consented  to  their 
children  and  wives  being  employed  in  the 
mills."     To   get   labour    the   greedy   mill- 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  127 

owners,  under  the  smug  pretence  of  ap- 
prenticing them  to  the  new  employments, 
obtained  children  from  the  parish  work- 
houses, whom  they  never  paid,  and  who 
worked  long  hours,  day  and  night,  under- 
fed and  ill-treated.  These  children  slept 
in  relays  in  beds  that  never  had  a  chance 
to  cool,  and  such  as  showed  a  disposition 
to  run  away,  worked  and  slept  with  irons 
riveted  on  their  ankles,  and  with  long 
links  reaching  to  the  hips. 

Gibbins  quotes  his  authorities  for  these 
statements  and  shows  the  sexes  living 
promiscuously  and  with  less  decorum 
than  the  brutes.  This  trade  in  work- 
house children  became  in  time  a  regular 
slave  traffic.  There  are  still  traces  of  it 
in  the  world,  but  enlightened  legislation 
nowadays  tends  to  humanize  the  Indus- 
trial Life  and  checks  the  martyrdom  of 
childhood. 

Karl  Marx,  in  his  "Capital,"  discussing 
this  awful  traffic  in  child  labour  in  Eng- 
land, says  that  the  hapless  apprentices 
were  flogged,  tortured,  and  fettered,  and 
that  this  squeezing  of  profits  out  of  hu- 
man blood  continued  until  Sir  Robert  Peel 
introduced  a  bill  for  the  protection  of 
children.  In  the  view  of  Marx,  Capital 
came  into  the  world,  dripping  from  head 
to  foot  and  from  every  pore  with  blood 
and  dirt.  This  is,  of  course,  the  extreme 
view  of  the  militant  Socialist,  and  is  un- 
fair to  the  progressive  and  conscientious 
Capitalist,  who  from  the  first  has  not  beeji 
neglectful  of  the  rights  and  comforts  of 
his  employees.  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  him- 
self a  capitalist. 


CELAPTER  XIII. 

JACQUES    BONHOMME,     FRENCH 
HATHNAUGHT. 

"Jacques  Bonhomme  has  a  broad  back 
and  can  stand  it,"  was  a  stock  phrase  of 
the  nobility  and  clergy  of  the  ancient 
regime  in  Prance,  when  adding  an  addi- 
tional burden  to  the  already  intolerable 
load  carried  by  the  French  Hathnaught. 

Feudalism,  we  have  seen  in  previous 
chapters  and  from  citations  drawn  from 
Buckle,  Duruy,  and  Bonnemere,  was  al- 
ways stronger  in  France  than  elsewhere 
because  of  the  power  of  the  nobles  to 
enforce  their  claims  even  against  the 
kings.  In  all  the  tribe  of  Hathnaught, 
r.o  one  had  less  than  poor  Jacques  Bon- 
homme. Temporary  concessions  or  recog- 
nition of  his  class  as  a  third  estate,  as  in 
the  time  of  Philip,  the  Fair  who,  in 
1302,  called  together  the  States  General 
of  nobles,  clergy  and  commons,  were 
short  lived.  Men  like  Etienne  Marcel 
tried  in  vain  to  improve  conditions,  and 
despair  often  took  the  form  of  terrible 
risings  and  reprisals  such  as  that  of  the 
Jacquerie  or  Hathnaughts  in  135S,  but 
all  ended  in  the  further  enslavement  of 
the  common  herd. 

128 


DENNIS  HATIIN AUGHT  129 

Some  towns,  notably  Laon,  had  wrung 
charters  from  the  king,  nobles  and  clergy, 
but  these  communal  experiments  were 
ill-starred,  and  after  a  brief  blaze  of 
glory,  sank  back  into  the  general  mass 
of  degradation  which  tyranny  attempted 
to  make  the  fixed,  permanent  and  unal- 
terable condition  of  life.  Poor  Jacques 
staggered  on  beneath  his  burden,  worn  to 
a  rail  and  little  better  than  skin  and  bone, 
paying  all  the  taxes  and  reaping  none  of 
the  benefits,  while  nobles  and  clergy, 
made  more  insolent  with  the  passing 
years,  waxed  fatter  and  fatter. 

Jacques  carried  this  crushing  weight 
for  more  than  four  hundred  years  after 
the  rising  of  the  Jacquerie  until,  in  1789, 
the  oppressed  and  despoiled  Hathnaughts 
burst  all  bounds  and  feudalism  and  priv- 
ilege disappeared  in  a  torrent  of  the  sub- 
limcst  rage  that  this  world  has  ever 
known — the  immortal  B'rench  Revolution. 

The  literature  of  this  Revolution  is  im- 
mense and  is  still  growing.  As  time 
passes  and  passions  subside,  men  are 
coming  to  see  the  beneficial  results  to 
the  world  of  this  outpouring  of  a  nation's 
wrath  beside  which  the  wrath  of  Achilles 
was  the  wail  of  an  infant  in  the  midst 
of  a  cannonading. 

Carlyle's  celebrated  work  on  the  period 
must  not  be  regarded  as  authoritative. 
It  is  a  great  prose  epic,  full  of  power  and 
brilliancy,  but  if  you  know  little  of  his- 
tory to  start  with  you  will  gain  little 
knowledge  from  Carlyle  of  the  causes 
and  effects  of  this  mighty  upheaval.     It 


130  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

bears  the  same  relation  to  other  and 
more  judicious  works  on  the  Revolution 
that  Worcestershire  sauce  does  to  a 
steak,  and  if  taken  in  this  way  it  is  very 
appetizing. 

To  mention  authorities  would  be  to 
print  an  immense  bibliography.  Impor- 
tant works  bearing  upon  the  subject  have 
been  produced  by  Taine,  DeTocqueville, 
Thiers,  Blanc,  Van  Laun,  Lamartine, 
Rocquain,  Arthur  Young  (Travels  in 
France  During  the  Years  1787,  1788, 
1789),  Mignet,  Doniol,  Michelet,  Alison, 
Sybel,  Hausser,  Rabaut,  Buchez,  Ker- 
verseau  and  Clavelin,  Ternaux,  Madame 
de  Stael,  Janet,  Burke,  Quinet,  Berriat, 
Mackintosh,  and  Croker.  Dickens'  "Tale 
of  Two  Cities"  is  a  study  of  the  period 
in  fiction. 

When  the  Revolution  broke  out,  liberty 
had  entirely  disappeared  and  the  Hath- 
naughts  were  oppressed,  impoverished, 
and  threatened  with  starvation.  They 
lived  in  poor  cabins,  their  clothing  hardly 
deserved  the  name  of  rags,  and  their 
main  article  of  diet  was  black  bread,  with 
a  substitute  for  tea  made  by  pouring 
water  over  husks.  To  possess  white  bread 
and  be  discovered,  meant  a  visitation 
from  the  tax-collector.  Every  tax  press- 
ed down  upon  the  poor  and  industrious, 
while  the  rich,  idle  rascals,  and  clergy 
were  immune. 

Some  of  the  worst  burdens  were  the 
taille,  a  land  tax,  the  gabelle  or  salt  tax; 
tithes  of  various  kinds,  for  an  idle, 
vicious,  and  worthless  clergy  had  to  get 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  131 

its  pound  of  flesh  also;  wine  and  poll 
taxes  and  seigneurial  dues;  corvees  or 
forced,  unpaid  labour  on  the  highways 
during  a  quarter  of  the  -"f^ar,  for  the 
roads  had  to  be  kept  in  good  condition 
for  the  coaches  of  the  lazy  and  rascally 
nobles. 

Rousseau  in  his  "Political  Economy," 
contending  that  the  law  should  reflect 
the  popular  will,  and  that  there  should 
be  no  privileged  classes  with  extremes  of 
poverty  and  riches,  says:  "If  a  man  of 
position  robs  his  creditors  or  commits 
other  acts  of  rascality,  is  he  not  sure  of 
impunity?  Are  not  all  the  blows  he  dis- 
tributes, all  the  violences  he  commits, 
the  very  murders  and  assassinations  of 
which  he  is  guilty,  hushed  up  and  for- 
gotten in  a  few  months?  But  let  this 
man  himself  be  robbed,  and  the  whole 
police  set  to  work,  and  woe  to  the  poor 
innocent  man  whom  they  suspect.  If  he 
has  to  pass  a  dangerous  place,  escorts 
scour  the  country.  If  a  noise  is  made  at 
his  gate,  at  a  word  all  is  silent.  If  the 
axle  of  his  coach  breaks,  everybody  runs 
to  help  him.  If  a  carter  crosses  his  path 
his  attendants  are  ready  to  knock  him 
down,  while  fifty  decent  pedestrians  go- 
ing to  business  might  be  crushed  rather 
than  a  lazy  rascal  be  stopped  in  his 
coach. 

"All  these  attentions  do  not  cost  him 
a  sou;  they  are  the  rights  that  belong  to 
the  rich  man.  How  different  with  the 
poor.  The  more  he  needs  humanity,  the 
more  society  refuses  it  to  him.  If  there 
are  corvees  to  make,  recruits  required,  it 


132  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

is  he  who  has  the  preference.  He  al- 
ways bears  besides  his  own  burdens, 
those  from  which  his  rich  neighbour  is 
exempt." 

Old  people  were  compelled  to  beat 
ponds  at  night  so  that  the  favoured  fam- 
ilies might  not  have  their  slumbers  dis- 
turbed by  the  croaking  of  frogs.  The 
poor  tiller  of  the  soil  had  no  redress  if 
his  lord's  pigeons  consumed  his  grain; 
Indeed,  it  is  not  unlikely  that  if  he  inter- 
fered with  those  birds  which  he  was  pre- 
cluded by  law  from  possessing,  he  might 
have  been  subjected  to  punishment.  His 
lord  while  hunting  had  a  perfect  right 
to  pull  down  the  fences  and  ride  over  his 
crops. 

If  a  man  high  in  favour  at  Court  wished 
to  get  rid  of  an  enemy  he  had  the  means 
of  doing  so  through  the  lettre  de  cachet, 
and  the  enemy  was  hastened  to  the  Bas- 
tile  without  formality  of  trial  or  even  the 
merits  of  the  case  being  given  considera- 
tion. 

Voltaire  once  served  a  term  of  impris- 
onment for  merely  resenting  vert^ally  a 
wanton  insult  from  a  Court  parasite.  We 
may  be  sure  that  incidents  like  this  made 
the  little  man  of  Ferney  do  yeoman  ser- 
vice in  bringing  on  the  Revolution. 

Court  favourites  and  royal  mistresses 
received  pensions  and  gifts  which  taxed 
the  Hathnaughts  beyond  the  limits  of  en- 
durance. Camille  Desmoulins,  one  of  the 
leaders  of  the  devolution,  speaking  of  one 
Ducrot,  who  was  in  receipt  of  a  pension 
of  seventeen   hundred  livrcs  for  his  ser- 


DENNIS  HAT  UN  AUGHT  133 

vices  as  hairdresser  to  Mademoiselle 
d'Artois,  observed  that  the  young  lady 
"died  at  the  age  of  three  before  she  had 
any  hair." 

Arthur  Young,  whose  "Travels"  are  a 
mine  of  information  on  the  state  of  the 
country  before  the  Revolution,  speaks  of 
the  enormous  revenues  (300,000  livres  a 
year)  of  the  Abbot  of  the  Benedictine 
Abbey  of  St.  Germain,  and  noting  how 
the  land  was  wasted,  declares  that  one- 
fourth  the  sum  would  establish  a  noble 
farm.  The  "fat  ecclesiastic,"  as  Young 
calls  him,  like  the  rest  of  his  tribe,  did 
nothing  to  improve  the  condition  of 
the  wretched  people.  "Pat  ecclesiastic"! 
How  often  that  characterization  appears 
in  the  writings  of  those  who  have  touch- 
ed upon  the  history  of  the  Hathnaughts 
across  the  ages.  We  have  been  kept 
lean  while  monks  and  prelates  are  known 
by  their  anatomical  architecture — the  ro- 
tundity of  their  convex  facades. 

Another  observation  of  Young  is  sig- 
nificant and  worthy  of  chronicle.  He 
found  that  the  great  seignior,  Conde,  had 
more  than  a  hundred  square  miles  of 
idle  land  and  forest  which  teemed  with 
game.  Yet  the  poor  inhabitants  might 
not  till  any  of  this  land  nor  could  the 
Hathnaughts  destroy  even  the  meanest 
of  the  game  that  kept  on  increasing  and 
pestered  the  poor  dwellers  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood to  the  limit  of  endurance. 

All  burdens  fell  upon  the  shoulders  of 
men  of  ignoble  birth.  Members  of  the 
tribe  of  Hathnaught  might  never  aspire 


1S4  DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT 

to  preferment  in  the  church,  the  army  or 
the  State.  Only  persons  of  rank  were 
entitled  to  own  pigeons.  In  consequence 
of  this  systematic  degradation  of  the 
people  there  was  little  mechanical  skill  or 
real  progress,  and  all  departments  requir- 
ing such  talents  were  in  the  hands  of 
foreigners.  Manufactures  were  encour- 
aged only  so  far  as  they  contributed  to 
the  luxury  or  comfort  of  the  nobility. 
None  of  the  blessings  of  modern  liberty — 
a  free  press,  free  speech,  and  open  dis- 
cussion, the  suffrage,  representation  and 
the  popular  voice  in  government,  trial 
by  jury,  and  the  habeas  corpus,  wera 
known.  You  could  tell  one's  rank  In- 
stantly from  his  dress  or  deportment.  It 
was  only  just  before  the  Revolution  that 
the  establishment  of  clubs  broke  down 
barriers  sufficiently  to  enable  educated 
men  to  come  together  without  the  an- 
cient, aristocratic  distinction  of  rank. 

That  even  the  most  sacred  tie  in  the 
world,  the  intimacy  of  a  good  man  and  a 
good  woman,  bound  together  by  mar- 
riage, was  not  respected,  is  illustrated  in 
a  story  told  by  Buckle  in  his  "History 
of  Civilization." 

"In  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury," he  says,  "there  was  an  actress  on 
the  French  stage  of  the  name  of  Chan- 
tllly.  She,  though  beloved  by  Maurice  de 
Saxe,  preferred  a  more  honourable  at- 
tachment, and  married  Favart,  the  well- 
known  writer  of  songs  and  of  comic 
operas.  Maurice,  amazed  at  her  boldness, 
applied  for  aid  to  the  French  crown.  That 


DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT  135 

he  should  have  made  such  an  application 
is  sufficiently  strange;  but  the  result  of 
it  is  hardly  to  be  paralleled  except  in 
some  Eastern  despotism.  The  govern- 
ment of  Prance,  on  hearing  the  circum- 
stance, had  the  inconceivable  baseness  to 
issue  an  order  directing  Favart  to  aban- 
don his  wife,  and  intrust  her  to  the 
charge  of  Maurice,  to  whose  embraces 
she  was  compelled  to  submit." 

A  sense  of  humour  impels  us  to  one 
more  citation,  this  time  from  Taine's 
"Ancient  Regime."  It  is  his  famous  ac- 
count of  the  progress  of  the  French  King 
from  the  moment  he  arises  in  the  morn- 
ing, through  all  the  intricacies  of  getting 
him  into  his  shirt  and  down  to  the  ante- 
chamber where  visiting  grandees  await 
him.  It  is  that  consummate  ass,  Louis 
XIV,  of  whom  he  speaks: 

"In  the  morning  at  the  hour  named  by 
himself  beforehand,  the  head  valet  awak- 
ens him;  five  series  of  persons  enter  in 
turn  to  perform  their  duty,  and,  'al- 
though very  large,  there  are  days  when 
the  waiting  rooms  can  hardly  contain  the 
crowd  of  courtiers.'  " 

Scores  of  officials  and  servitors  tackled 
the  king  from  different  angles,  each  with 
a  special  job — spirits  of  wine  were  poured 
on  the  king's  hands  from  a  service  of 
plate,  and  he  was  then  handed  a  basin  of 
holy  water — this  old  roue  with  a  palaceful 
of  mistresses.  He  crossed  himself  and 
said  a  prayer,  which  no  doubt  the  fools 
about  him  thought  was  taken  down  in 
shorthand  by  an  angel.     In  presence  of 


1S6  DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT 

every  one  his  Majesty  got  out  of  bed 
and  put  on  his  sUppers.  He  received  his 
dressing  gown  from  the  grand  cham- 
berlain and  the  first  gentleman,  and  sat 
him  down  in  a  chair  in  which  later  he 
would  put  on  his  clothes. 

Then  another  group  of  persons,  each 
with  a  distinct  duty,  came  in  and  danced 
attendance  on  Louis.  All  sorts  of  tom- 
fool things  followed  before  the  king 
washed  his  hands  preparatory  to  dress- 
ing. Two  pages — count  'em,  as  Tody 
Hamilton,  Barnum's  press  agent,  would 
say — removed  the  royal  slippers.  The 
grand  master  of  the  wardrobe  drew  off 
the  royal  nightshirt  by  the  right  hand 
and  the  first  valet  of  the  wardrobe  did 
the  same  to  the  left,  while  both  oflicials 
handed  the  garment  to  an  officer  of  the 
wardrobe.  Then  came  a  valet  of  the 
wardrobe  in  solemn  manner  bearing  the 
shirt  of  his  Majesty,  wrapped  in  white 
taffeta. 

Does  his  Majesty  slip  into  his  shirt 
without  further  ado?  Nothing  of  the 
sort;  he  is  far  from  getting  into  it  yet. 
"The  honour  of  handing  it,"  says  Taine, 
"is  reserved  to  the  sons  and  grandsons 
of  France;  in  default  of  these,  to  the 
princes  of  the  blood  or  those  legitimated; 
in  their  default  to  the  grand  chamberlain 
or  to  the  first  eentleman  of  the  bed- 
chamber— the  latter  case,  it  must  be  ob- 
{-:erved,  being  very  rare,  the  princes  being 
obliged  to  be  present  at  the  king's  lever 
as  well  as  the  princesses  at  that  of  the 
Queen.     At   last   the   shirt   is   presented. 


DENNIS  HATHNAUQHT  137 

and  a  valet  carries  off  the  old  one;  the 
first  valet  of  the  wardrobe  and  the  first 
valet-de-chambre  hold  the  fresh  one,  each 
by  a  right  and  left  arm,  respectively; 
while  two  other  valets  during  this  oper- 
ation extend  his  dressing  gown  in  front 
of  him  to  serve  as  a  screen.  The  shirt 
is  now  on  his  back,  and  the  toilet  com- 
mences." 

Louis  is  still  far  from  dressed,  but  the 
reader  who  would  know  more  of  the  de- 
tails will  have  to  consult  Taine.  Enough 
has  been  showxi  to  piove  that  the  use- 
less, wasteful,  and  criminal  expenditures 
of  this  corrupt  Court  for  a  day,  would 
support  half  a  province  of  Hathnaughts. 
And  the  peasantry  had  to  furnish  the 
wherewithal  in  the  sweat  of  their  brows. 

Contrast  all  this  with  the  simple  and 
artless  grace  of  our  old  friend  Martin 
Gilhooly,  the  brick-layer,  who  bounds  out 
of  bed  in  the  morning,  yanks  off  his 
cutty  sark  without  ceremony  and  jumps 
into  his  simple  articles  of  attire,  while 
in  the  kitchen  his  good  wife  Mary  Ann 
is  slipping  a  modest  repast  into  his 
dinner-pail.  Twenty  minutes  after  Mar- 
tin awakes,  he  is  on  his  way  to  the 
scene  of  his  labour.  And  Martin  does  a 
better  day's  work  than  Louis  ever  did, 
the  best  day  he  ever  knew. 


CHAPTER    XrV. 

DENNIS,  THE  PLOUGHMAN,  IN 
POLITICS. 

It  is  a  temperamental  difference  of 
character  that  makes  the  British  Hath- 
naught  gain  concessions  from  the  ruling 
caste  by  agitation,  mass  meeting  and  pe- 
tition, that  his  French  cousin  thinks  im- 
possible of  attainment  save  when  de- 
manded back  of  a  barricade. 

In  the  last  hundred  years  the  Hath- 
naughts  have  seen  some  mighty  changes, 
notable  among  them  being  the  removal 
of  the  civil  and  other  disabilities  of  the 
Catholics  and  Jews;  the  great  Reform 
bill  of  1832,  which  dealt  a  deathblow  to 
aristocratic  privilege  and  ascendency; 
the  repeal  of  the  odious  Corn  Laws  in 
1846,  establishing  free  trade  as  a  natural 
right,  and  reducing  the  high  cost  of  liv- 
ing; further  parliamentary  reform  in 
1866;  disestablishment  of  the  Irish 
Church  and  the  abolishing  of  the  tithe 
system  which  made  the  mass  of  the  Irish 
people  support  a  small  body  of  ecclesias- 
tics whose  religion  they  despised. 

But  for  the  purposes  of  the  present 
discussion  the  most  significant  reform 
was  that  which  in  1884  extended  the  fran- 

138 


DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT  139 

chise  to  the  agricultural  labourers,  the 
Hathnaughts  of  rural  Britain,  who,  up 
to  that  time,  had  advanced  but  little 
beyond  the  serfdom  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
This  bill  swelled  the  voting  lists  by  a 
round  two  million. 

It  is  not  exaggeration  to  say  that  in 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century 
there  was  not  a  more  wretched  or  hope- 
less class  of  Hathnaughts  in  the  world 
than  the  English  agricultural  labourers. 
Mr.  Warren  Isham,  in  "The  Mud  Cabin," 
a  study  of  the  character  and  tendencies 
of  British  institutions  (D.  Appleton  & 
Co.,  1853),  records  some  first  hand  in- 
vestigations of  this  unfortunate  class.  He 
found  an  absolute  lack  of  interest  in  the 
tenant  and  labourer  on  the  part  of  Lord 
Have-and-Hold,  who  fattened  on  his  ill- 
gotten  part  of  poor  Hathnaught's  earn- 
ings. 

"It  is  enough  for  him  to  know,"  says 
Mr.  Isham,  "that  if  they  die  of  destitu- 
tion, there  are  enough  others  to  take 
their  places  and  labour  for  the  same  pit- 
tance." 

There  is  evidence  that  this  indifference 
to  the  comforts  of  the  labourer  still  char- 
acterizes the  British  landlord.  Mrs.  Philip 
Snowden,  in  an  address  delivered  some 
years  ago  at  the  Brooklyn  Academy  of 
Music,  declared  that  although  he  was 
at  the  head  of  the  sanitary  reform  com- 
mission, the  Duke  of  Northumberland  op- 
posed sanitary  legislation  because  It 
would  materially  increase  his  own  ooilga- 
tions.    Mrs.  Snowden  told  of  twenty-eight 


140  DENNIS  HATHNAU(jrtlT 

thousand  tenements  inspected,  only  one 
hundred  and  twenty-eight  of  which  had 
bathroom  facilities. 

The  workhouse  has  always  been  the 
British  landlord's  solution  of  the  question 
of  Hathnaught's  miseries.  Mr.  Isham 
found  that  in  Dorsetshire  it  cost  twenty- 
seven  pounds  9s.  9d.  annually  to  support 
a  prisoner.  Agricultural  labourers  did  not 
earn  more  than  twenty  pounds.  A  single 
criminal  cost  more  to  support  than  an 
entire  family  often  numbering  five,  six 
or  eight  children. 

"Is  it  a  wonder,"  asks  Mr.  Isham,  "that 
the  famished  wretch  should  be  a  thief, 
schooled  to  it  as  he  is  by  the  robbery 
practiced  upon  himself,  and  goaded  to  it 
by  the  pinchings  of  hunger?  But  though 
that  be  his  name,  and  though,  to  ex- 
piate his  offence,  he  be  sent  to  Botany 
Bay,  he  has  cleaner  hands  and  a  lig-hter 
load  of  guilt  on  his  soul  than  me  land- 
lord who  stays  behind  to  riot  upon  the 
fruit  of  his  earnings." 

About  the  same  time  Mr.  Isham  was 
making'  his  study  of  British  industry  so 
far  as  it  applies  to  the  agricultural  la- 
bourer, the  London  Morning  Chronicle 
was  publishing  the  results  of  an  investi- 
gation conducted  by  its  own  commission- 
er. "Education,"  said  the  Chronicle,  "has 
advanced  him  but  little  beyona  wnat  he 
was  in  the  days  of  William  the  Con- 
queror. As  he  was  in  generations  gone 
by,  so  he  is  now,  a  moral  enigma,  a 
physical  .scandal,  an  intellectual  catalep- 
tic."    This  writer  declares,  "They  are  en- 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  141 

tirely  wanting  in  the  independent  bear- 
ing of  the  man,  are  awkward  in  their 
gait,  and  dress  in  a  garb  which  belongs 
to  another  century  than  this." 

Isham  says  that  of  the  marriages  that 
transpired  in  England  and  Wales  in 
1839,  1840,  1841,  out  of  367,894  couples 
united  in  wedlock,  122,457  men  and  181,- 
378  women  made  their  marks  in  the  reg- 
ister. He  saw  whole  troops  of  females 
at  work  in  the  field,  toiling  at  the  spade, 
the  mattock,  and  the  hoe.  Higher  edu- 
cation for  these  people  was  opposed  on 
the  ground  that  it  would  make  the  Hath- 
naughts  look  above  their  station  and 
there  would  be  no  one  to  black  the  boots 
or  tend  the  horses  of  the  gentry. 

Isham  contends  that  the  landlord,  and 
not  the  Hathnaughts,  benefited  princi- 
pally by  the  abolition  of  serfdom.  At 
the  exhibition  of  the  "Works  of  Industry 
of  All  Nations,"  held  in  England  in  1852, 
he  saw  one  thousand  Hathnaughts  in 
their  smock  frocks  and  with  red  ribbons 
on  their  hats  marched  two  by  two  into 
the  Crystal  Palace  as  though  on  purpose 
for  a  show. 

These  men  spoke  to  Isham  of  belong- 
ing to  this  squire  or  that  lord,  and  an 
Englishman  of  intelligence  standing  by 
told  him  they  belonged  to  the  soil  as 
much  as  the  serfs  of  Russia,  and,  al- 
though not  named  in  the  bond,  were  ac- 
tually transferred  with  the  soil  from 
master  to  master. 

Citing  Hallam's  "Middle  Ages"  as  au- 
thority,   Isham    continues:       "No    more 


142  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

than  three  centuries  ago,  the  forefath- 
ers of  those  people  were  serfs,  which 
is  but  another  name  for  slaves.  They 
were  bought  and  sold,  not  only  with  the 
soil,  but  without  the  soil,  and  were  sub- 
ject to  the  lash.  Between  the  land- 
lord and  the  serfs  stood  the  vassal,  who 
sustained  much  the  same  relation  to 
each  as  the  tenant  farmer  does  now;  that 
is,  the  landlord  let  out  the  land  and  serfs 
to  the  vassal,  as  he  does  now  the  land 
to  the  tenant  farmer,  the  labourers, 
though  not  actually  stipulated  for,  con- 
tinuing to  sustain  much  the  same  rela- 
tion to  both  as  the  serfs  did  before.  The 
appearance,  the  legal  forms  of  serfdom 
have  been  abolished,  I  am  bold  to  say, 
the  better  to  enjoy  the  reality." 

There  is  very  strong  evidence  that 
the  landlord  has  gained  by  the  change 
from  serfdom  to  the  present  system,  for 
he  is  relieved  of  the  old  feudal  respon- 
.sibility  of  furnishing  his  quota  of  men 
for  military  service,  and  of  caring  for 
his  serfs  when  ill  or  Incapacitated.  The 
London  Morning  Chronicle,  which  made 
its  investigation  about  the  same  time 
Tsham  did,  quoted  Portesque  to  prove 
that  four  hundred  years  ago  the  princi- 
pal food  of  the  serfs  was  meat.  Harri- 
son's "Description  of  England"  has  a 
like  observation.  "The  Spanish  nobles 
who  came  into  England  with  Philip," 
.says  Harrison,  "were  astonished  at  the 
diet  which  they  found  among  the  poor. 
'The.se  Engli.sh,'  said  one  of  them,  'have 
Ihoir    houses    made    of    sticks    and    dirt, 


DENNIS  H AT HN AUGHT  143 

but  they  fare  commonly  as  well  as  the 
King-.'  " 

We  are  told  by  Isham  that  there  was 
an  understanding-  among  the  farmers  of 
a  parish  that  they  would  not  employ 
each  other's  labourers,  an  understanding 
so  well  observed  that  a  Hathnaught, 
fired  by  a  sense  of  liberty  and  setting 
out  upon  his  travels  to  better  his  for- 
tune, met,  at  the  first  place  he  asked 
for  employment,  the  question  that  al- 
ways put  a  damper  upon  his  hopes  and 
sent  him  back  to  his  old  servitude: 
"Why  did  you  leave  your  master?"  This 
is  what  the  Englishman  meant  when  he 
told  Isham  that  the  Hathnaughts  were 
still  transferred  with  the  soil  as  in  the 
days  of  serfdom. 

Serfdom  is  not  without  its  friends 
among  modern  historians.  That  high 
Tory,  Sir  Archibald  Alison,  in  his  "His- 
tory of  Europe"  (Vol.  4;  Harper  & 
Brothers,  1843),  says  in  a  footnote  on 
page  twelve  after  quoting  Cochrane's 
"Travels  in  Russia  and  Siberia":  "It 
would  be  a  happy  day  for  the  Irish 
peasantry,  the  slaves  of  their  own  heed- 
less and  savage  passions,  when  they  ex- 
changed places  with  the  Siberian  con- 
victs, subjected  to  the  less  grievous  yoke 
of  punishment  and  despotism." 

In  the  main  body  of  the  text  this 
"amiable"  historian  says:  "It  would  be 
a  real  blessing  to  its  (Ireland's)  inhab- 
itants, in  lieu  of  the  destitution  of  free- 
dom, to  obtain  the  protection  of  slavery." 
As  a  "Modest  Proposal"  this  beats  Swift's 


144  DENNIS  H AT HN AUGHT 

suggestion  to  use  children  for  food  in 
Ireland,  but  there  is  this  difference — 
the  heavy-minded  old  Tory,  Alison,  was 
in  earnest;    Swift  was  only  fooling. 

Duruy  in  his  "Middle  Ages"  makes 
particular  note  of  the  modern  champions 
of  serfdom  and  cites  their  stock  argu- 
ments. One  Ditchfield,  in  a  recent  work 
entitled  "The  Old  English  Squire," 
mourns  the  passing  of  this  dominant 
class  and  bewails  the  fact  that  the  auc- 
tioneer's hammer  is  heard  everywhere 
throughout  the  land.  Yet  to  those  who 
look  forward  to  a  day  of  freedom  for 
the  English  Hathnaught,  this  sound  may 
verily  be  compared  to  the  music  of  a 
liberty  bell.  It  is  no  longer  possible,  as 
Bulwer  Lytton  shows  it  was  in  his  ro- 
mance, "My  Novel,"  for  Squire  Hazel- 
dean  to  put  Hathnaught  in  the  stocks, 
and,  thanks  to  the  good  work  accom- 
plished since  the  days  of  Joseph  Arch, 
the  English  agricultural  labourer  is  as- 
suming more  of  the  manner  and  erect 
stature  of  a  freeman. 

Joseph  Arch  was  one  of  those  simple 
souls  that  appear  from  time  to  time 
across  the  ages,  who  are  born  with  a 
mission,  and  have  the  divine  call  to 
preach.  Justin  McCarthy  tells  his  story 
in  "A  History  of  Our  Own  Times."  He 
says:  "Suddenly  in  the  spring  of  1872, 
not  long  after  the  opening  of  Parlia- 
ment, vague  rumours  began  to  reach  Lon- 
don of  a  movement  of  some  kind  among 
the  labourers  of  South  Warwickshire.  It 
was  first  reported  that  they  had  asked 


DENNIS  H AT HN AUGHT  145 

for  an  increase  of  wages;  then  that  they 
were  actually  forming  a  labourers'  union, 
after  the  pattern  of  the  artisans;  then 
that  they  were  on  strike.  There  came 
accounts  of  meetings  of  rural  labourers 
— meetings  positively  where  men  made 
speeches.  Instantly  the  London  papers 
sent  down  their  special  correspondents, 
and  for  weeks  the  movement  among  the 
agricultural  labourers  of  South  "War- 
wickshire— the  county  of  Shakespeare — 
became  the  sensation  of  London. 

"How  the  thing  first  came  about  is 
not  very  clear.  But  it  seems  that  in 
one  of  the  South  Warwickshire  villages, 
where  there  was  sad  and  sullen  talk  of 
starvation,  it  occurred  to  some  one  to 
suggest  a  strike  against  the  landlords. 
The  thing  took  fire  somehow.  A  few 
men  accepted  it  at  once.  In  the  neigh- 
bouring village  was  a  man  who,  al- 
though only  a  day  labourer,  had  been 
long  accustomed  to  act  as  a  volunteer 
preacher  of  Methodism,  and  who,  by 
his  superior  intelligence,  his  good  char- 
acter, and  his  effective-  way  of  talking, 
had  acquired  a  great  influence  among 
his  fellows.  This  man  was  Joseph  Arch. 
He  was  consulted,  and  he  approved  of 
the  notion.  He  was  asked  if  he  would 
get  together  a  meeting  and  make  a 
speech,  and  he  consented. 

"Calling  a  meeting  of  day  labourers 
then  was  almost  as  bold  a  step  as  pro- 
claiming a  revolution.  Yet  it  was  done 
somehow.  There  were  no  circulars,  no 
placards,   none   of  the  machinery  which 


146  DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT 

we  associate  with  the  getting  up  of  a 
meeting.  The  news  had  to  be  passed  on 
by  word  of  mouth  that  a  meeting  was 
to  be  held  and  where;  the  incredulous 
had  to  be  convinced  that  there  was  really 
to  be  a  meeting;  the  timid  had  to  be 
prevailed  upon  to  take  courage  and  go. 
The  meeting  was  held  under  a  great 
chestnut  tree,  which  thereby  acquired  a 
sort  of  fame.  There  a  thousand  labour- 
ers came  together  and  were  addressed 
by  Joseph  Arch.  He  carried  them  all 
with  him.  His  one  great  idea — great 
and  bold  to  them,  simple  and  small  to 
us — was  to  form  a  labourers'  union  hke 
the  trades-unions  of  the  cities.  The  idea 
was  taken  up  with  enthusiasm.  New 
branches  were  formed  every  day.  Arch 
kept  on  holding  meetings  and  addressing 
crowds." 

When  the  movement  was  In  full 
swing,  important  men  like  Auberon  Her- 
bert lent  it  their  support  and  Arch  be- 
came associated  with  members  of  Par- 
liament and  others  of  a  class  unfamiliar 
to  him,  but  McCarthy  says  his  good 
sense  never  forsook  him.  Many  were 
surprised  to  note  that  when  the  Hath- 
naughts  showed  political  predilection 
they  inclined  more  toward  Liberalism 
than  they  did  toward  Toryism.  "Most 
persons,"  says  McCarthy,  "had  supposed 
that  a  race  of  beings  brought  up  for 
generations  under  the  exclusive  tutor- 
ship of  the  landlord,  the  vicar,  and  the 
wives  of  the  landlords  and  the  vicar, 
would  have  had  any   political   tendencies 


DENNIS  HATIINAUGHT  147 

they  possessed  drilled  and  drummed  into 
the  grooves   of  Toryism." 

It  may  be  set  down  in  passing  that 
the  Church  of  England,  with  its  system 
of  putting  the  livings  or  rectorships  in 
the  hands  of  the  powerful  families,  and 
the  resultant  filling  of  these  with  com- 
placent and  pliable  vicars,  has  had  a 
vicious  effect  upon  the  development  of 
the  character  of  the  humble.  One  little 
hymn  of  this  church,  the  stronghold  of 
the  dominant  class,  chants  the  lovely 
thought  that  God  has  ordered  the  estate 
of  the  great  and  the  lowly  and  that  all 
should  be  content  to  let  things  remain 
as  they  are.  But  it  is  refreshing  news 
to  read  in  the  press  of  the  current  day 
that  there  is  a  loud  demand  in  England 
for  the  suppression  of  this  canting  ode 
of  Smugdom.  We  return  to  McCarthy's 
history:  "The  landlords  in  most  places 
declared  themselves  against  the  move- 
ment of  the  labourers.  Some  of  them 
denounced  it  in  unmeasured  language. 
Mr.  Disraeli  at  once  sprang  to  the  front 
as  the  champion  of  feudal  aristocracy 
and  the  British  country  squire.  The  con- 
troversy was  taken  up  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  served,  if  it  did  nothing 
else,  to  draw  all  the  more  attention  to 
the  condition   of  the  British  labourer. 

"One  indirect  but  necessary  result  of 
the  agitation  was  to  remind  the  public 
of  the  injustice  done  to  the  rural  popu- 
lation when  they  were  left  unfranchised 
at  the  time  of  the  passing  of  the  last 
Reform  Bill.     The  injustice  was  strong- 


148  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

ly  pressed  upon  the  Government,  and 
Mr.  Gladstone  frankly  acknowledged  that 
It  would  be  impossible  to  allow  things 
to  remain  long  in  their  anomalous  state. 
In  truth,  when  the  Reform  Bill  was  pass- 
ed nobody  supposed  that  the  rural  popu- 
lation were  capable  of  making  any  use 
of  a  vote.  Therefore  the  movement 
which  began  in  Warwickshire  took  two 
directions  when  the  immediate  effects  of 
the  partial  strike  were  over.  A  perma- 
nent union  of  labourers  was  formed,  cor- 
responding generally  in  system  with  the 
organizations  of  the  cities.  The  other 
direction  was  distinctly  political.  The 
rural  population  through  their  leaders 
joined  with  the  reformers  of  the  cities 
for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  an  equal 
franchise  in  town  and  country;  in  other 
words,  for  the  enfranchisement  of  the 
peasantry.  The  emancipation  of  the  ru- 
ral labourers  began  when  the  first  meet- 
ing answered  the  appeals  of  Joseph  Arch. 
The  rough  and  ready  peasant  preacher 
had  probably  little  idea,  when  he  made 
hia  speech  under  the  chestnut  tree,  that 
he  was  speaking  the  first  words  of  a 
new  chapter  of  the  country's  history." 

Arch  afterward  sat  in  Parliament  as 
the  first  representative  there  of  the  tribe 
of  Hathnaught. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

THE  RIGHT  HON.  DENNIS  HATH- 
NAUGHT,  M.  P. 

Permit  me  to  introduce  to  you  Mr. 
Dennis  Hathnaught,  M.  P.  You  will  hard- 
ly recognize  him,  but  he  is  the  same  old 
fellow  we  saw  in  ancient  days  wearing-  an 
iron  collar;  toiling  as  serf  in  mediaeval 
times;  rising  in  insurrection  under  Wat 
Tyler,  and  finally  organizing  into  unions 
under  Joseph  Arch.  Now  he  has  kicked 
over  the  conventions  of  ages  by  actually 
entering  Parliament  and  taking  his  seat 
beside  the  scions  of  Have-and-Hold.  The 
Labour  party  is  becoming  a  power  in  pol- 
itics and  in  Parliament. 

When  the  House  of  Lords  attacked  the 
budget  in  1910,  the  question  of  the  right 
of  the  hereditary  house,  irresponsible  to 
the  people,  to  interfere  with  the  financial 
legislation  of  the  country,  became  acute 
and  led  to  proposals  for  its  abolition  or 
its  reformation  along  radical  lines,  such 
as  curtailing  its  privileges,  doing  away 
with  its  power  of  veto,  or  making  it  an 
elective  second  chamber. 

Lords  of  Have-and-Hold  were  not  so 
obtuse  that  they  did  not  realize  the  grav- 
ity of  the  situation,  and  so,  in  the  elec- 
tion that  followed  the  appeal  to  the  coun- 

149 


150  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

try  in  1910  they  adopted  the  tactics  of  the 
Artful  Dodg-er,  who,  although  he  was  the 
thief  himself,  always  tried  to  distract  at- 
tention from  himself  by  shouting  "Stop 
thief"  the  loudest.  The  emissaries  of  the 
Lords  succeeded  very  well  in  getting  the 
Hathnaughts'  edge  off  them  by  raising 
the  cry  for  tariff  reform,  deriding  the 
free-trade  policy  that  has  governed  Eng- 
land since  the  Corn  laws  days,  and  de- 
manding the  establishment  of  a  protec- 
tive tariff,  which  they  declared  meant 
work  and  wages  for  Dennis.  How  these 
privileged  gentlemen  do  worry  about  the 
work  and  wages  of  the  proletariat — when 
they  want  his  vote.  The  Lords,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  were  simply  stealing  the 
thunder  of  Joseph  Chamberlain,  who  came 
out,  years  before,  in  support  of  a  re- 
turn to  the  protective  policy  which  had 
been  shattered  by  Richard  Cobden  and 
the  old  Corn  Laws  agitators. 

Chief  of  the  Hathnaughts  in  Parliament 
is  Lloyd  George.  His  underlying  idea  of 
taxation  is  that  it  should  be  borne  by 
those  that  can  best  afford  to  bear  it.  He 
holds  that  it  should  fall  upon  the  super- 
fluities of  life,  rather  than  upon  the  ne- 
cessities. It  is  a  revival  of  the  old  ques- 
tion that  so  long  agitated  France,  and 
finally  led  to  the  Revolution.  In  the  days 
of  the  old  regime  in  France  the  rich 
food  and  luxuries  of  the  rich  were  not 
taxed,  but  the  bread  and  salt  of  the  peo- 
ple were.  The  equipage  of  the  rich  noble 
was  not  burdened  with  a  tax,  but  the 
donkey  of  the  poor  peddler  and  trades- 


DENNIS  H AT HN AUGHT  151 

man  was.  In  like  manner,  the  English 
Lords  have  been  willing  to  put  the  bur- 
den of  taxation  on  the  back  of  poor  Den- 
nis. Lloyd  George  thinks  there  has  come 
a  time  in  British  history  when  Dennis 
and  milord  should  change  burdens.  He 
contends  that  his  reforms  mean  the  set- 
ting up  of  a  great  insurance  scheme  for 
the  unemployed,  the  sick,  and  the  infirm. 
He  is  for  the  proletariat,  so  long  exploit- 
ed for  the  aggrandizement  of  the  nobil- 
ity. 

The  Westminster  Gazette,  supporting 
Lloyd  George,  declared  that  England  has 
prolonged  a  feudal  land  system  to  the 
point  at  which  it  seriously  threatens  the 
further  progress  of  the  country.  The 
Lords  and  their  kind  have  grown  fat  on 
unearned  increment.  The  land  of  Eng- 
land is  owned  by  a  smaller  group  of  per- 
sons than  a  like  area  in  any  other  part 
of  the  globe.  Half  of  England  is  possess- 
ed by  two  thousand  five  hundred  per- 
sons. The  Duke  of  Sutherland  owns  1,- 
358,600  acres.  It  is  easy  to  see,  there- 
fore, that  there  is  in  Britain  a  great 
landlord's  trust,  of  which  the  House  of 
Lords  may  be  called  the  Board  of  Direc- 
tors. 

Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton,  who  has  done 
yeoman  service  in  the  Hathnaught  cause, 
declares  truly  that  great  estates  in  the 
hands  of  the  few  was  one  of  the  main 
causes  in  bringing  about  the  downfall  of 
Rome.  He  finds  the  system  to  be  the 
curse  of  Ireland  and  the  cause  of  its 
misery,  and  points  out  that  the   system 


152  DENNI8  HATHNAUGHT 

brought  on  the  French  Revolution.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  most  of  the  great  land- 
lords of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  are 
the  descendants  of  parasites  and  syco- 
phants who  got  their  estates  as  a  reward 
for  their  fawning  and  cajoling  of  the 
great.  In  some  few  cases  the  properties 
were  the  reward  of  great  services  to  the 
state,  but  these  are  the  exception.  Much 
sympathy  has  been  wasted  upon  the  poet 
Spenser,  who  wrote  "The  Faerie  Queen," 
because  his  estate  in  Ireland  was  sacked 
by  Irish  rebels  and  his  home  burned.  But 
Spenser,  like  others  of  his  kind,  was  sim- 
ply a  receiver  of  stolen  goods.  His  Irish 
property  was  unjustly  wrested  from  a 
native  of  the  soil  and  turned  over  to  him 
as  a  reward  for  his  glorification  of  Eliza- 
beth. All  the  real  good  men  of  this  stamp 
have  ever  conferred  upon  their  country 
in  a  material  way  would  fit  snugly  in 
the  snuff  box  of  a  microbe. 

It  was  the  purpose  of  the  land  system 
proposed  by  Lloyd  George  to  encourage 
the  better  use  of  the  land  by  making 
large  quantities  of  it  available  for  homes, 
for  industrial  purposes,  and  for  public 
enjoyment.  Every  owner  of  land  was  re- 
quired to  furnish  an  estimate  of  his  prop- 
erty at  his  own  valuation.  This  includ- 
ed the  total  value  of  property  as  it  stood, 
with  buildings  and  other  improvements, 
and  that  of  the  site  alone — the  "original 
site  value." 

It  was  the  starting  point  of  a  new  sys- 
tem of  taxation.  It  was  planned  to  take, 
by  taxation,  part  of  the  increased  value 


DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT  153  . 

of  these  lands,  not  due  to  any  exertion  of 
the  landlord,  but  to  the  increasing-  growth 
and  prosperity  of  the  country — the  un- 
earned increment.  Undeveloped  land, 
which  now  bears  lightly,  the  burden  of 
taxation — hardly  enough,  in  fact,  to  be 
appreciable — would  have  to  assume  its 
share  of  taxation. 

This,  Lloyd  George  and  thinkers  in  the 
same  economic  school  contend,  will  force 
landlords  to  put  the  land  without  delay 
to  its  "most  socially  advantageous  use," 
to  quote  the  Manchester  Guardian,  one  of 
the  great  provincial  newspapers  of  Eng- 
land. The  great  world  war  has  stopped 
all  progressive  legislation,  but  the  new 
Doomsday  Survey  of  England  is  simply 
postponed,  for  the  democratic  movement 
has  too  much  impetus  to  go  back  now. 

Expropriation  of  the  landlords  by  state 
purchase,  on  a  plan  similar  to  that  now 
being  worked  out  in  Ireland,  has  been 
suggested  for  Great  Britain,  but  on  this 
point  Lloyd  George  said:  "If  the  extrava- 
gant prices  which  have  hitherto  accom- 
panied every  acquisition  of  land  for  pub- 
lic or  industrial  purposes  are  to  rule  in 
future,  the  peasant  proprietary  is  doom- 
ed to  a  subsidized  insolvency."  When  he 
first  urged  a  new  state  valuation,  the 
Conservatives  denounced  it  as  virtual 
confiscation. 

Lloyd  Georg-e  and  the  party  of  Hath- 
naughts  wish  to  do  away  with  land  monop- 
oly, so  that  rural  England  can  be  re- 
created and  developed.  They  mean  to  put 
an  end  to  the  holding-  of  vast  areas,  over 


154  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

which  the  idle  rich,  when  making  holiday, 
may  hunt  a  poor  fox  or  deer  to  its  death. 
The  new  order  of  things  means  the  pass- 
ing of  the  old-fashioned  country  gentle- 
man, who  rules  like  a  lord  of  feudal  days, 
tyrannizing  over  a  tenantry  doomed  for 
lack  of  opportunity  to  a  poverty  that  is 
hopeless.  The  gentry  in  many  instances 
hold  the  parish  living,  to  which  they  as- 
sign a  clergyman  who  can  be  depended 
upon  to  preach  the  gospel  of  Christ  ac- 
cording to  the  version  of  the  landlord, 
and  he  also  has  the  power  in  many  in- 
stances to  say  who  shall  represent  his 
district  in  the  House  of  Commons.  The 
rotten  and  pocket  boroughs  of  England 
have  not  all  disappeared,  and  the  exten- 
sion of  the  suffrage  and  the  secret  ballot 
does  not  always  enable  the  Hathnaughts 
to  vote  according  to  their  Inclinations 
and  consciences. 

Mr.  A.  St.  John  Adcock,  a  London 
journalist  and  novelist,  writing  in  the 
London  Daily  Chronicle,  from  personal 
observations  made  during  the  election  fol- 
lowing the  lord's  rejection  of  the  budget 
in  1910,  declared  that  the  landlords  dic- 
tated how  the  rural  population  should 
vote,  and  that  the  people  were  I'ttle  more 
than  serfs.  We  have  seen  by  the  career 
of  Joseph  Arch,  who  in  1872,  after  a  hard- 
fought  campaign  against  the  low  wages 
paid  agricultural  labourers,  organized  the 
National  Agricultural  Labourers'  Union, 
that  there  is  plenty  of  evidence  of  the 
survival  of  serfdom  in  rural  England. 
Mr.  Adcock  said  that  the  lords  dominated 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  155 

not  only  the  land  and  the  tenantry,  but 
the  schools  and  the  churches.  He  told 
of  one  noble  Duke  who  caused  his  mono- 
gram to  appear  above  the  doors  of  the 
cottages  in  a  village  he  owned.  His  mon- 
ogram also  appeared  on  the  outer  wall  of 
the  church,  as  if  he  were  the  local  deity, 
and  the  place  were  dedicated  to  his  wor- 
ship. 

"The  villagers,"  Mr.  Adcock  said,  "are 
the  duke's  tenants,  and,  since  none  of  the 
poorer  dwellers  hereabouts  believe  in  the 
secrecy  of  the  ballot,  it  is  easy  to  guess 
for  which  candidate  they  voted,  and 
why." 

These  wretched  Hathnaughts  are  forced 
to  vote  against  their  own  best  interests 
through  fear  of  eviction,  the  blacklist, 
and  persecution.  Even  the  school-chil- 
dren, Mr.  Adcock  said,  were  forced  to 
wear  the  blue  rosettes  of  the  Conserva- 
tive candidate,  although  they  were  the 
sons  and  daughters  of  men  Liberal  by 
conviction.  A  fine  state  of  affairs  in  free 
and  merrie  England.  These  people  live 
in  wretched  hovels,  and  their  masters 
make  no  effort,  as  shown  by  Mr.  Ad- 
cock, to  improve  their  condition  or  elevate 
them  In  any  way. 

One  of  the  worst  types  of  landlords 
in  England  is  what  is  known  as  "the 
ground  landlord."  Leaseholders  may  own 
the  buildings  in  a  town,  but  some  peer 
may  have  an  ancient  title  to  the  land,  and 
as  a  "ground  landlord"  exact  tribute. 

Vast  areas  of  England  are  made  soli- 
tudes for  sports,  while  thousands  cry  for 


156  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

bread  and  a   chance  to  work.     To  learn 
how   the   lords  use   the   idle  land   that  it 
is  proposed  to  make  productive  through 
taxation,  take  this  illustration  of  the  late 
Mr.  William  T.  Stead,  the  noted  English 
journalist,  writing-  in  the  Eeview  of  Re- 
views,  London.     Mr.    Stead  took   for  his 
purpose  the  estate  of  Strathfieldsaye,  of 
eight  thousand  acres,  a  grant  to  the  Duke 
of  Wellington,  as  a  reward  for   military 
services.     The  birds  and  other  game  shot 
by  succeeding  dukes  and     their     friends 
from   1887    to   1909,   a   period   of   twenty- 
two     years,     including     pheasants,     par- 
tridges,   hares,    rabbits,      and     woodcock, 
numbered  one  hundred     and     forty-nine 
thousand  two  hundred     and     eighty-five. 
Farmers  or  Hathnaughts  dare  not  touch 
a    single   bird    or    game    animal,    even    if 
they  find  them  on  the  road  or  upon  their 
own    leased    land,    excepting    by    express 
permission  of  the  duke.     To  enter  a  pre- 
serve, Mr.  Stead  says,  is  to  incur  the  sus- 
picion   of   felony   as   a   poacher   or   game 
thief. 

Prevented  from  spreading  out  upon  the 
land,  the  source  of  all  wealth,  the  Hath- 
naughts are  crowded  into  the  towns  and 
cities,  and  there  is  frightful  congestion 
and  incidental  poverty.  Pauperism  is  on 
the  increase,  and  there  is  a  noticeable  de- 
terioration, physically,  of  the  common 
English  people. 

Figures  give  the  number  of  paupers 
in  England  and  Wales  as  almost  a  mil- 
lion. This  va.st  army,  comprising  one  in 
every   thirty-seven   of  the   population,   is 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  157 

receiving  public  relief  in  some  form.  A 
report  of  the  Local  Government  Board  in 
1910  showed  that  the  number  of  able- 
bodied  men  relieved  on  account  of  want 
of  work  had  increased  one  hundred  and 
thirty-three  per  cent,  over  the  previous 
year's  figures.  The  total  body  of  pauper- 
ism, as  compared  with  the  total  on  the 
same  date  of  the  previous  year  had  in- 
creased by  3.4  per  cent.  The  new  recruits 
numbered  thirty-seven  thousand  one 
hundred  and  seventy-seven.  The  highest 
increase  was  in  Durham,  7.1  per  cent. 
One  in  every  thirty-two  persons  in  Lon- 
don is  a  pauper.  It  is  all  due  to  free 
trade,  cry  the  Unionists,  but  Dennis 
Hathnaught,  M.  P.,  representing  the  La- 
bour party,  knows  better. 

Great  attention  is  now  being  given  in 
England  to  the  question  of  the  physical 
deterioration  of  the  English  people.  This 
tendency  toward  degeneracy  was  brought 
out  very  strikingly  at  the  time  of  the 
Boer  War,  when  England  needed  re- 
cruits. It  has  since  been  reduced  to  a 
systematic  study.  In  a  medical  examina- 
tion of  forty  thousand  children  in  various 
parts  of  England,  thirteen  per  cent,  were 
found  to  be  suffering  from  defective  vi- 
sion, one  per  cent,  from  heart  disease, 
one  per  cent,  from  lung  trouble,  two  per 
cent,   from  bodily  deformity. 

Sir  Francis  Galton,  England's  leading 
authority  on  the  subject  of  eugenics,  held 
that  the  bulk  of  the  community  was  de- 
teriorating, judging  from  inquiries  into 
the  teeth,  hearing,  eyesight,  and  mal- 
formation   of    children    in    board    schools 


3  5  8  DENNIS  HA  THNAUOHT 

and  from  the  apparently  continuous  in- 
crease of  insanity  and  feeble-mindedness. 
He  declared  that  the  popularity  of  ath- 
letics proved  little,  for  it  is  one  thing  to 
acclaim  successful  athletes,  which  any 
mob  of  weaklings  can  do,  as  at  a  cricket 
match.  It  is  another  thing  to  be  an 
athlete  one's  self. 

Other  features  of  recent  progressive 
British  legislation  are  measures  for  a 
larger  income  tax  and  an  increase  in  the 
taxation  of  liquors  and  tobacco;  old-age 
pensions,  and  compulsory  workingmen's 
insurance.  The  liquor  and  tobacco  taxes 
were  used  by  the  Conservatives  in  a  tell- 
ing way  with  the  Hathnaughts.  The  tax 
on  whiskey  was  especially  odious  in  Ire- 
land and  Scotland,  large  distilling  coun- 
tries, but  bore  lighter  on  England,  where 
there  is  little  distilling,  but  much  brew- 
ing of  beer.  However,  Ireland  and  Scot- 
land, and  also  Wales,  support  the  Lib- 
erals, because  of  benefits  that  are  ex- 
pected to  come  to  them  in  other  ways. 

In  the  days  of  Elizabeth,  according  to 
Hume,  the  House  of  Commons  first  ven- 
tured to  assert  its  rights  as  a  legislative 
body,  particularly  in  regard  to  financial 
bills.  In  our  day — since  1910,  in  fact — 
the  House  of  Lords  has  been  stripped  of 
its  power  of  veto,  and  can  no  longer  hold 
back  the  progress  of  the  country  by  play- 
ing the  dog  in  the  manger.  Dennis 
Hathnaught,  M.  P.,  is  young  in  legisla- 
tion, but  he  is  old  in  memory,  and  it  is 
written  in  the  Stars  that  the  days  of 
the  Lords  are  numbered,  and  that  their 
castles  are  to  be  dismantled. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

PATRICK  HATHNAUGHT,  HOME 
RULER. 

Priestcraft  and  Parsonolatry  have  di- 
vided Irish  Hathnaughts  into  two  hostile 
camps — Catholics  who  regard  themselves 
as  Irish,  and  Protestants  who  are  largely 
anti-Irish  and  indifferent  to  the  national 
aspirations.  If  left  to  themselves,  the 
Hathnaughts  would  undoubtedly  live  In 
amity  and  peace,  but  the  curse  of  dissen- 
sion and  the  almost  unexampled  power  of 
the  Catholic  and  Protestant  clergy  over 
their  flocks  perpetuate  a  hatred  that 
retards  the  national  prosperity  and  pre- 
sents the  example  of  a  quick-witted,  in- 
telligent race  that  might  be  among  the 
world's  leaders,  retaining  an  almost  me- 
diaeval development. 

So  great  is  the  insistence  that  educa- 
tion shall  be  sectarian,  that  several  of 
the  so-called  Queen's  colleges  which  are 
avowedly  non-sectarian,  have  but  few 
students.  If  a  child  is  a  Catholic,  the 
priests  demand  that  he  shall  be  turned 
over  to  them;  the  Episcopal  or  Church  of 
Ireland  clergy  are  equally  zealous  that 
they  lose  none  of  their  own,  and  the 
Presbyterians   are    no      less      determined 

159 


160  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

that  Presbyterian  born  Irishmen  shall 
follow  in  the  footsteps  of  Calvin  and 
Knox.  So-called  "godless  schools"  where 
these  children  would  be  taught  together, 
might  prove  the  salvation  of  the  coun- 
try, but  in  order  to  get  to  Heaven,  each 
by  his  own  route,  they  have  turned  the 
country  into  a  Hell. 

It  is  religion  that  divides  the  Irish  and 
not  race,  for  the  so-called  Scotch-Irish 
are  of  blood  kindred  to  that  of  the  native 
Irish.  1  might  cite  a  score  of  authorities 
to  show  that  Scotia  or  Scotland  was  an 
ancient  name  of  Ireland  and  that  the 
Scots  of  to-day  are  descendants  of  Irish 
tribes  that  centuries  ago  crossed  to  North 
Britain. 

In  coming  to  Ireland  at  the  time  of 
the  plantation  of  Ulster  under  James  the 
first,  the  Scotch  were  simply  returning 
to  the  fatherland.  General  Stewart  of 
Garth  in  his  famous  "Sketches  of  the 
Highlanders"  declares  he  often  acted  as 
interpreter  for  Gaelic  speaking  Irish  sol- 
diers, finding  their  language  to  differ  but 
little  from  that  of  the  Highland  Scotch. 
Even  the  Scotch  Lowlander,  who  now 
considers  himself  qufte  English,  sjpoks 
Gaelic  until  the  time  of  Malcolm  III 
(1056)  when  the  king,  having  married 
an  English  princess,  introduced  English 
speech,  customs,  and  immigrants  into 
the  country.  Before  the  Reformation  the 
native  Irish  and  the  new  settlers  always 
amalgamated  just  as  Celt,  Saxon,  Dane 
and  Norman  united  to  form  the  English 
race  of  to-day,  but  since  that  great  spirit- 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  161 

ual  upheaval,  the  Irish  have  divided  ac- 
cording to  religion.  If  you  are  Catholic 
you  are  Irish,  if  not  Catholic  you  get  an 
alibi. 

Thus  we  see  S.  S.  McClure  in  his  "Au- 
tobiography" labouring  to  prove  in  his 
first  chapter,  that  although  born  in  Ire- 
land he  is  a  native  of  Scotland,  a  notable 
exception  to  the  rule  of  Sir  Boyle  Roche 
that  it  is  impossible  to  be  in  two  places 
at  once  unless  you  are  a  bird.  One  can- 
not help  thinking  that  such  persons  imag- 
ine that  at  the  time  of  the  Creation  the 
making  of  Ireland  was  let  out  to  a  sub- 
contractor who  wore  a  funny  little  hat, 
smoked  a  short  clay  pipe,  and  carried  his 
materials  in  a  hod,  while  gentle  zephyrs 
from  the  newly  made  Lakes  of  Klllarney 
blew  through  his  Galways. 

In  one  of  the  ablest  studies  of  the  Irish 
question  that  has  ever  been  made,  the 
preface  to  "John  Bull's  Other  Island," 
George  Bernard  Shaw  truthfully  con- 
tends that  it  is  not  the  complacent,  priest- 
ridden  Catholic  who  is  the  typical  Irish- 
man and  rebel,  but  the  Protestant  of  the 
class  represented  by  himself.  Joseph 
McCabe,  an  "Anglo-Saxon"  with  a  n-ime 
as  Gaelic  as  Murphy,  in  his  book  on 
Shaw,  pooh-poohs  the  great  jester'3 
>laim  to  be  Irish  and  labours  to  prove 
that  the  Irish  do  not  amount  to  much 
anyhow.  Another  McCabe — James  D. — 
reflects  the  same  spirit  in  a  book  called 
"Great  Fortunes,"  when  he  describes 
Robert  Bonner  as  "merely  a  Scotchman 
born  in  Ireland."  There  is  paradox  for 
you  with  the  vengeance  of  the  bigot. 


162  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

An  attempt  has  even  been  made  to 
show  a  distinction  between  Scotch  and 
Irish  by  claiming-  that  Mac  is  a  Scottish 
form  and  Mc  an  Irish  one  having  no  con- 
nection with  Mac,  wfien  the  truth  is  that 
Mc  is  only  an  abbreviation  of  Mac  which 
means  son. 

Ireland  is  the  only  country  in  the  world 
that  has  been  systematically  deprived  of 
its  right  to  claim  its  sons  and  daughters, 
the  minute  they  engage  in  any  work  or 
art  other  than  carrying  the  hod  or  scrub- 
bing floors.  In  a  book  called  "Race  or 
Mongrel,"  which  is  based  on  the  argu- 
ment that  races  deteriorate  when  they 
practice  promiscuity  and  mix  their  blood 
with  that  of  alien  people,  the  author,  Al- 
fred Schultz,  whose  name  would  probably 
lead  him  to  be  interned  in  England  as 
a  German  if  he  happened  to  be  there 
during  the  great  war,  declares  that  the 
English  are  a  race  of  one  blood,  the  Sax- 
ons, Danes  and  Normans  being  merely 
branches  of  the  same  great  people.  He 
entirely  ignores  the  great  Celtic  element 
in  the  English  blood  which  scholars  have 
recognized  and  studied  since  the  time 
Matthew  Arnold  in  his  "Celtic  Literature," 
drew  attention  to  the  subject.  Schultz 
in  dealing  with  Ireland,  ignores  the  com- 
mon Gaelic  heritage  of  Ireland  and  Scot- 
land, and  calmly  writes  down  the  North 
Irish  as  a  separate  race  although  if  he 
had  the  philosophical  insight  of  a  spar- 
row he  would  have  seen  that  the  race 
difference  is  almost  wholly  due  to  religion 
and  the  traditions  of  religion. 


DENNIS  HATHNAUQHT  163 

Michael  J.  F.  McCarthy  in  books  call- 
ed "Priests  and  People  of  Ireland,"  "Rome 
in  Ireland"  and  similar  works  has  waged, 
with  some  encouraging-  degree  of  success, 
a  fight  against  the  almost  druidical  power 
of  the  priesthood  over  the  people.  lie 
declares  that  thousands,  especially  la- 
bourers, have  fled  across  the  Atlantic  and 
Indian  oceans  to  escape  this  intolerable 
thralldom.  In  Lover's  "Rory  O'More" 
there  is  an  amusing  account  of  the  hero 
purchasing  a  good  stout  stick  for  his 
parish  priest  to  beat  his  flock  with,  and 
this  prerogative  of  power  to  inflict  per- 
sonal chastisement  has  not  been  alto- 
gether abandoned  by  the  clar-gy  even  in 
our  day. 

On  the  other  hand,  Orangemen,  by  per- 
petuating an  asinine  idolatry  of  William 
III,  have  been  reared  in  a  belief  that  they 
are  not  Irish  at  all.  I  remember  reading 
in  a  book  on  Ireland  written  by  a  Mr. 
Lynd,  an  amusing  story  illustrating  this. 
A  friend  of  Lynd  meeting  one  McCabe,  a 
labourer  of  some  notoriety  in  his  particu- 
lar town,  remarked,  "You  have  a  good 
Irish  name,"  whereupon  McCabe  replied 
with  emphasis,  "Irish  hell;  it  is  a  good 
Protestant  name." 

This  animosity  of  Protestant  for  Catho- 
lic and  Catholic  for  Protestant  is  worked 
for  all  it  is  worth  by  the  great  landlord 
interests.  They  raise  the  cry  that  "Home 
Rule"  means  "Rome  Rule,"  but  in  reality 
it  is  the  perpetuation  of  landlord  ascen- 
dency they  are  working  for,  and  not  re- 
ligion, for  they  know  full  well  that  there 


164  DENNIS  H AT HN AUGHT 

can  be  no  religious  persecution  under 
the  measure  of  home  rule  whicn  the  Brit- 
ish government  aims  to  establish  for  the 
Irish  people  in  a  Parliament  on  Dublin's 
College  Green,  at  the  close  of  the  present 
world  war. 

To  understand  what  is  meant  by  Home 
Rule  makes  a  brief  recital  of  Irish  history- 
necessary.  From  the  time  of  Henry,  the 
second,  who  came  to  Ireland  under  pow- 
er of  a  "bull"  issued  in  1154  by  Pope 
Adrian  the  fourth,  whose  family  name 
was  Nicholas  Brakespere  and  who  was 
the  only  Englishman  who  ever  occupied 
the  Papal  throne,  Ireland  has  been  ex- 
ploited for  the  benefit  of  English  rulers 
and  adventurers.  There  was  a  time  in 
the  history  of  Ireland  when  it  was  no 
crime  for  an  Englishman  to  kill  an  Irish- 
man and  when  an  Irishman  could  not 
maintain  an  action  in  the  courts,  no  mat- 
ter how  just  his  cause. 

In  the  time  of  Elizabeth,  according  to 
Froude's  "History  of  England,"  it  was 
proposed  by  a  company  of  adventurers 
to  have  an  "open  season"  on  the  Irish 
and  to  repopulate  the  land  with  EnglLsh 
colonists,  but  the  kind  suggestion  was 
never  acted  upon.  That  Irish  life  was 
held  cheaply  is  borne  out  by  Froude,  an 
anti-Irish  writer,  who  tells  us  that  when 
time  hung  heavy  upon  the  shoulders  of 
English  officers  in  the  "good  old  days," 
they  had  a  habit  of  going  out  for  some 
"Killings,"   using   the    people   as   game. 

The  Irish  were  ordered  to  adopt  the 
names,  customs  and  language  of  the  in- 


DENNI8  HATHNAUGHT  165 

vader  and  after  the  Reformation,  to  con- 
form to  the  established  church  (Epis- 
copalian). The  son  of  an  Irish  Catholic 
upon  becoming  Protestant  could  evict 
his  father  and  assume  the  ownership  of 
his  estates.  It  was  a  crime  to  say  the 
Mass  and  a  capital  offense  to  be  a  priest. 
Education,  under  the  old  Penal  laws  was 
denied  to  Irish  Catholics  and  it  is  a  mat- 
ter of  historic  record  that  even  Daniel 
O'Connell,  the  great  Irish  Liberator,  al- 
though his  father  was  a  member  of  an- 
cient family  and  of  means,  was  forced, 
because  of  this  proscription  to  learn  his 
first  letters  from  a  hedge  schoolmaster, 
a  species  of  instructor  unique  in  the 
history  of  education  and  made  necessary 
by  the  Penal  laws  which  denied  educa- 
tion to  Catholics.  Gradually  the  major 
portion  of  the  land  of  Ireland  was  taken 
from  the  rightful  owners  on  one  pretext 
or  another  and  parcelled  out  among  Eng- 
lish adventurers. 

Irish  trade  was  annihilated  by  British 
legislative  enactments  and  this  brought 
on  conditions  that  led  Dean  Swift,  one 
of  the  greatest  leaders  of  public  opinion 
Ireland  ever  had,  (See  Lecky:  Leaders 
of  Public  Opinion  in  Ireland)  to  propose 
a  species  of  boycott  against  England  at 
a  time  when  the  word  boycott  was  not  in 
use,  but  the  system  as  a  means  of  achiev- 
ing an  end,  well  understood.  He  pro- 
posed that  Irishmen  buy  only  Irish  made 
goods,  and  thus  bar  the  English  out  of 
Irish   markets. 

England's    difficulty    has    always    been 


166  DENNI8  HATHNAUGHT 

Ireland's  opportunity.  In  1782,  taking 
advantage  of  the  American  Revolution 
which  was  giving  England  all  the  trou- 
ble she  could  bear,  there  was  formed  an 
Irish  Protestant  organization  called  the 
Volunteers,  ostensibly  for  the  repelling 
of  threatened  French  invaders,  but  In 
reality  to  bring  about  the  legislative  In- 
dependence of  Ireland.  These  Volun- 
teers under  Lord  Charlemont  forced  Eng- 
land to  recognize  the  independence  of  the 
Irish  Parliament  sitting  in  College  Green, 
Dublin.  Of  that  parliament  the  greatest 
orator  was  Henry  Gratton.  Curious  it 
was  that  in  this  Parliament,  representing 
the  people  of  a  country  overwhelmingly 
Catholic,   no   Catholic  could  sit. 

Presbyterians  and  other  Dissenters  had 
almost  as  hard  a  time  as  the  Catholics 
of  Ireland  and  it  is  a  matter  of  history 
that  the  Irish  rebellion  of  1798  was  large- 
ly a  Presbyterian  rising.  The  majority 
of  the  United  Irishmen  were  Protestants. 

Francis  McKinley,  an  ancestor  of  Pres- 
ident McKinley,  was  one  of  the  Protes- 
tant Irish  hanged  in  '98.  Green  (History 
of  the  English  People)  declares,  however, 
that  some  of  the  Catholic  rebels  used  to 
pounce  on  and  slaughter  Protestants  just 
because  they  happened  to  be  Protestants 
and  that  this  turning  of  the  national 
cause  into  a  religious  one,  alienated  the 
Ulstermen.  In  1801  by  shameless  bribery 
and  the  plentiful  distribution  of  titles 
and  privileges,  the  English  government 
brought  about  a  union  of  the  parliaments 
of  England  and  Ireland.     Then  arose  the 


DENNIS  HATHNAVGHT  167 

mighty  Daniel  O'Connell  who  had  formed 
an  organization  to  bring  about  Catholic 
emancipation,  a  feat  he  achieved  in  1829 
when  he  forced  the  Duke  of  WelHngton 
to  consent  to  a  measure  of  relief  as 
the  alternative  of  threatened  civil  war. 
O'Connell  did  not  advocate  the  separation 
of  Ireland  from  England  as  an  indepen- 
dent country,  believing,  according  to 
Wendell  Phillips,  that  free,  Ireland  would 
be  but  a  petty  nation  like  Portugal  and 
subject  to  the  bullying  of  European  pow- 
ers. But  he  did  not  believe  in  permitting 
his  native  land  to  be  exploited  by  the  Eng- 
lish. O'Connell  had  been  elected  to  the 
British  Parliament  before  emancipation 
had  been  achieved,  but  on  account  of  his 
religion,  had  not  been  permitted  to  take 
his  seat.  When  he  did  become  a  member 
entitled  to  speak  upon  the  floor  of  the 
House,  he  raised  his  voice  in  behalf  of  a 
repeal  of  the  Union  and  the  restoration 
of  Ireland's  own   parliament. 

In  1848  hot  headed  young  Irishmen 
under  Smith  O'Brien  started  a  rebellion 
which  was  an  unsuccessful  rising. 
O'Connell  had  broken  with  these  young 
Irelanders  as  they  were  called,  and  died 
of  a  broken  heart. 

After  O'Connell's  death  there  were  no 
great,  determined  efforts  to  bring  about 
a  repeal  of  the  Union,  but  in  1872  Mr. 
Isaac  Sutt  who  had  been  of  counsel  for 
Smith  O'Brien  was  returned  for  Limerick 
as  a  Home  Ruler  and  imder  him  the  agi- 
tation for  the  repeal  of  the  Union  became 
a    moderate    demand    for    home    rule    or 


168  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

self-government  in  Ireland.  Butt  was  a 
Protestant  but  earnestly  devoted  to  his 
country's  welfare.  He  was  finally  ousted 
from  the  leadership  by  Charles  Stewart 
Parnell  who  headed  a  party  demanding  a 
broader  measure  of  self-government 
than  Mr.  Butt  and  his  followers  had 
urged. 

Mr.  Parnell  remained  leader  of  the 
party  until  1891  when  he  was  forced  into 
retirement  because  of  his  intrigue  with 
the  famous  Kitty  O'Shea,  sister  of  Gen- 
eral Evelyn  Wood  and  wife  of  Captain 
O'Shea,  one  of  Parnell's  followers.  Par- 
nell like  Butt  was  a  Protestant  land- 
holder. Mr.  Justin  McCarthy,  historian 
and  novelist,  succeeded  to  the  leadership 
of  a  majority  of  the  Irish  Nationalist 
party  but  a  small  number  remained  true 
to  Parnell  under  the  leadership  of  Mr. 
John  Redmond  who  eventually  succeeded 
to  the  leadership  of  the  whole  party  on 
the  retirement  of  Mr.  McCarthy  who  was 
more  fitted  for  the  study  than  for  the 
forum. 

Redmond's  leadership  has  been  mas- 
terly and  the  consummate  ability  he  has 
shown  in  beating  down  British  prejudice 
has  brought  home  rule  within  striking 
distance. 

Winston  Churchill  who  braved  the 
wrath  of  the  Orangemen  and  showed  a 
characteristic  contempt  for  their  threats 
by  speaking  for  homo  rule  in  the  holy 
city  of  the  Boyne  faction,  Belfast,  de- 
clared the  measure  would  be  the  means 
of  bringing  to  an  end,  an  accursed  sys- 
tem that  mad(!  men  hate  their  fellows. 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  lfl» 

Hopeful  signs  are  not  wanting  in  Ire- 
land that  Mr.  Churchill's  prophecy  may 
come  true  and  that  Irish  Hathnaughts, 
unmindful  of  priest  or  parson,  shall  join 
issues  for  the  rehabilitation  of  their  na- 
tion, and  work  together  for  the  common 
good.  It  would  be  an  easy  matter  for 
a  chemist  to  prove  that  there  is  no  dif- 
ference in  the  elements  that  form  the 
waters  of  the  Tiber  and  the  Boyne.  All 
the  trouble  comes  from  the  attitude  of 
the  people  that  assemble  on  the  banks. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

SLATIC  HATHNAUGHTS— ITAN  AND 
MICHAEL. 

In  Russia  and  Poland  the  Hath- 
naughts  were  subjected  until  recently 
to  a  crushing  and  grinding  serfdom  that 
seemed  all  but  hopeless.  Even  now  that 
the  people  are  demanding  through  their 
Duma  some  measure  of  self-government, 
Ivan,  the  Russian,  and  Michael,  the  Pole, 
are  overwhelmed  with  grievous  taxa- 
tion that  makes  their  position  almost  as 
burdensome  as  that  of  the  Jews  whom 
they  are  taught  by  a  vicious  State 
church  to  persecute  and  despise.  In  a 
history  of  the  common  people,  it  is  well 
worth  while  to  study  the  conditions 
under  which  the  Russian  and  Polish 
peasants  toiled  and  sweated  for  an  idle, 
lawless  and   ignorant  nobility. 

Rambaud,  in  his  "History  of  Russia," 
classifies  the  Hathnaughts  of  old  Russia 
under  three  heads — "The  slave  or  kholop, 
properly  so-called,  the  mancipium  of  the 
Romans,  a  man  taken  in  war,  sold  by 
himself  or  some  one  else,  or  son  of  a 
kholop.  Second,  the  peasant  inscribed 
on  the  lands  of  a  noble,  the  colonus  ad- 
scriptius   of   the    Roman   Empire,    whose 

170 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGIir  171 

person  was  legally  free,  but  who  was  to 
be  reduced  by  means  of  a  more  and  more 
rigourous  legislation  to  the  condition  of 
krepostnyi  or  serf  of  the  glebe.  Third, 
the  free  cultivator  who  lived  like  a 
farmer  on  the  lands  of  another  and  had 
the  right  to  change  his  master,  but  who 
was  soon  to  be  mingled  with  the  preced- 
ing class." 

"It  was  the  inscribed  peasant,"  says 
Rambaud,  "who  constituted  almost  the 
whole  of  the  rural  population.  In  th* 
ancient  provinces  the  peasant  might 
consider  himself  as  the  primitive  In- 
habitant of  the  soil.  He  was  only  made 
subject  to  the  gentleman  in  order  to 
secure  to  the  latter  an  income  sufficient 
for  military  service;  he  therefore  con- 
tinued to  look  on  himself  as  the  true 
proprietor.  In  these  rural  masses  the 
primitive  features  of  the  Slav  organiza- 
tion were  preserved  in  all  their  vigour. 
It  was  the  commune  or  mir,  and  not  the 
individuals,  who  possessed  the  land;  it 
was  the  commune  that  was  responsible 
to  the  Tzar  for  the  tax  for  the  corvee 
and  dues  to  the  lord.  This  responsibility 
armed  the  commune  with  an  enormous 
power  over  its  members,  and  this  power 
embodied  itself  in  the  starost,  assisted 
by  elders. 

"In  the  bosom  of  the  commune  the 
family  was  not  organized  less  severely, 
less  tyrannically  than  the  mir.  The 
father  of  the  family  had  over  his  wife, 
his  sons,  married  or  single,  and  their 
wives,   an    authority   almost   as   absolute 


172  DENNIS  H AT HN AUGHT 

as  that  of  the  starost  over  the  commune 
or  the  Tzar  over  the  Empire.  The  pa- 
rental authority  became  harder  and  more 
stern  from  the  contact  with  serfage  and 
the  despotic  rule.  Ancient  barbarism 
was  still  intact  among  these  ignorant 
people;  the  graceful  customs  or  the  sav- 
age manners,  the  poetic  or  cruel  super- 
stitions of  the  early  Slavs,  were  per- 
petuated by  them.  The  Russian  peasant 
remained  a  pagan  under  his  veneer  of 
orthodoxy.  His  funeral  songs  seem 
destitute  of  all  Christian  hope.  His  mar- 
riage songs  preserve  the  tradition  of  the 
purchase  or  capture  of  the  bride.  The 
sad  lot  of  the  rustic  was  yet  to  be  ag- 
gravated during  the  three  centuries  of 
progress  which  the  upper  classes  had 
still  to  accomplish.  In  view  of  the  state, 
as  of  the  proprietor,  he  tended  more  and 
more  to  become  a  beast  of  burden,  a  pro- 
ductive force  to  be  used  and  abused  at 
pleasure.     .     .    . 

"The  starost  governed  the  town  and 
the  district  depending  on  it.  As  the  citi- 
zens paid  the  heaviest  taxes,  they  were 
forbidden  to  quit  the  town;  they  were, 
as  during  the  last  days  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  bound  to  the  city  glebe.  Alexis 
Mikhailovitch  was  afterward  to  attach 
the  pain  of  death  to  this  prohibition.  To 
assess  the  impost,  the  starost  convoked 
at  once  both  the  deputies  of  the  town 
and  those  of  the  rural  communities. 
The  impost  of  the  tagla  was  paid  by  the 
town  collectively  in  proportion  to  the 
number  of  fires,  and  all  the  people  were 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  173 

collectively  responsible  for  each  other  to 
the  State. 

"In  the  burgess  class  may  be  counted 
the  merchants,  whose  Russian  name  of 
gostl  (guests  or  strangers)  shows  how 
far  commerce  still  was  from  being  ac- 
climatized in  this  land  and  under  this 
regime.  Muscovy  produced  in  abun- 
dance leather  from  oxen,  furs  from  the 
blue  and  black  fox,  the  zibeline,  the 
beaver,  and  the  ermine;  wax,  honey, 
hemp,  tallow,  oil  from  the  seal,  and  dried 
flsh.  From  China,  Bokhara,  and  Persia, 
she  received  silks,  tea  and  spices.  The 
Russian  people  are  naturally  intelligent 
and  industrious,  but  still  commerce  lan- 
guished. 

"Fletcher,  the  Englishman,  has  as- 
signed as  the  reason  for  this  decay  the 
Insecurity  created  by  anarchy  and  des- 
potism. The  moujik  did  not  care  either 
to  save  or  to  lay  by.  He  pretended  to  be 
poor  and  miserable  to  escape  the  exac- 
tions of  the  prince  and  the  plunder  of 
his  agents.  If  he  had  money  he  buried 
it,  as  one  in  fear  of  an  invasion. 

"  'Often,'  says  the  English  writer,  'you 
will  see  them  trembling  with  fear,  lest  a 
boyard  should  know  what  they  have  to 
sell.  I  have  seen  them  at  times  when 
they  had  spread  out  their  wares  so  that 
you  might  make  a  better  choice,  look  all 
around  them,  as  if  they  feared  an  enemy 
would  surprise  them  and  lay  hands  on 
them.  If  I  asked  them  the  cause,  they 
would  say  to  me  "I  was  afraid  there 
might  be  a  noble  or  one  of  the  sons  of 


174  DENNIS  HATHNAUOHT 

the  boyards  here;  they  would  take  away 
my  merchandise  by  force"  "...  The 
citizen,  like  the  inhabitant  of  the  French 
towns  of  the  fourteenth  century,  was 
only  a  sort  of  villein;  he  wore  the  cos- 
tume of  a  peasant  and  lived  almost  like 
him.  The  merchants  were  really  what 
they  were  called  by  Ivan,  the  Terrible — 
the  moujiks  of  commerce." 

Two  other  long-established  institutions 
— domestic  slavery  and  the  seclusion  of 
women — have  had  a  marked  effect  upon 
the  social   and  industrial   life   of   Russia. 

"Besides  the  peasants  more  or  less 
attached  to  the  glebe,"  says  Rambaud, 
"all  Russian  proprietors  kept  in  their 
castles,  or  in  their  town  houses  at  Mos- 
oow,  a  multitude  of  servants  like  those 
who  encumbered  the  senators'  palaces  in, 
imperial  Rome.  A  great  lord  always 
gathered  round  him  many  hundreds  at 
these  dvorovie,  both  men  and  women« 
)x)ught  or  born  in  the  house,  whom  he 
never  paid,  whom  he  fed  badly  and  who 
served  him  badly  in  return,  but  whose 
numbers  served  to  give  an  idea  of  the 
wealth  of  their  master. 

"The  cortege  of  a  noble  on  his  way  to 
the  Kremlin  may  be  compared  to  that 
of  a  Japanese  daimio.  A  long  file  of 
sledges  or  chariots,  a  hundred  horses, 
outriders  who  made  the  people  stand 
back  by  blows  with  their  whips;  a  crowd 
of  armed  men  who  escorted  the  noble; 
and  behind  a  host  of  dvorovie,  often  with 
naked  feet  beneath  their  magnificent 
liveries,    filled   with    their   stir   and    noise 


DENNIS  HATHNAUaUT  175 

the  streets  of  Bielyi-gorod.  These  do- 
mestic slaves  were  subjected,  without 
distinction  of  sex,  to  the  most  severe 
discipline,  and  were  forced  to  submit  to 
all  the  cruel  or  voluptuous  caprices  of 
their  masters,  and,  like  the  slaves  of 
antiquity,  were  exposed  to  the  moat 
frightful  chastisements.  Whilst  the 
registered  colon  was  attached  to  the  land, 
the  kholopy  could  be  sold,  either  by 
heads  or  by  families,  without  compunc- 
tion. Wives  were  separated  from  their 
husbands,  and  children  from  their  par- 
ents." 

The  serf  system  may  be  studied  from 
the  interesting  point  of  view  of  fiction 
from  Gogol's  "Dead  Souls"  and  Tur- 
genief's  short  story  of  "Mumu."  It  Is 
small  wonder  that  long  before  Alexander 
II  emancipated  the  Hathnaughts,  March 
3,  1861.  there  had  been  loud  calls  for 
amelioration. 

Rambaud  describes  that  other  bar- 
barous and  oriental  system  of  the  Rus- 
sians— the  seclusion  of  women.  Woman 
was  little  better  off  than  a  slave.  A 
Russian  proverb  says,  "I  love  thee  like 
my  soul  and  I  dust  thee  like  my  jacket." 
She  had  as  little  part  in  the  life  of  her 
husband  until  a  comparatively  modern 
time — and  then  only  under  the  French 
influence — as  an  ancient  Greek  woman 
did.  It  is  related  by  Rambaud  on  the 
authority  of  Herberstein  that  a  Russian 
woman,  having  married  a  foreigner,  did 
not  believe  herself  loved,  as  he  never 
beat  her.     She  was  in  disgrace  with  the 


176  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

other  women  who  got  their  chastisement 
regularly.  So  widespread  was  this  sub- 
mission and  so  thoroughly  had  the  rotten 
and  superstitious  Russian  Church  incul- 
cated it  as  a  duty  upon  them,  that  even 
robust  women  would  willingly  submit  to 
be  whipped  by  a  feeble  husband. 

Russian  Hathnaughts  are  robbed  and 
impoverished  by  the  religious  and 
monastic  institutions  in  an  even  greater 
degree  than  are  the  Spanish  people. 
Shortly  after  the  legal  murder  of  Ferrer, 
the  great  educator  in  Spain,  there  was  an 
agitation  for  the  suppression  of  the  re- 
hgious  houses.  It  was  shown  that  these 
institutions  sheltered  sixty  thousand  men 
and  women  subject  to  vows  as  monks 
and  nuns,  who  were  engaged  in  pro- 
ductive industries  in  competition  with 
paid  labour  and  highly  taxed  manufactur- 
ers, but  with  the  advantage  to  the  mon- 
asteries of  having  no  taxes  to  pay  or 
wage  scales  to  meet. 

Russia  is  even  more  monk  and  priest- 
ridden  than  Spain.  In  Voltaire's  "Charles 
XII"  he  describes  the  Russia  of  the  days 
before  Peter  the  Great,  when  the  head 
of  the  Russian  Church  possessed  power 
of  life  and  death  oy.er  all  Russians  and 
even  the  Tzar  acknowledged  his  superior 
authority  by  holding  the  bridle  of  the 
horse  when  the  visible  head  of  the  church 
on  earth  was  on  parade.  Peter  changed 
all  that,  but  the  church  has  never  lost 
its  hold  upon  the  people  and  has  been 
largely  instrumental  in  repressing  lib- 
erty   and    persecuting   the    great    writers 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  177 

that  have  dared  to  give  the  living  force 
of  words  to  the  national  aspirations. 
The  church,  too,  has  alwavs  been  back 
of  the  pogroms.  During  the  massacre 
of  the  Jews  at  Kishineff,  the  bishop  of 
that  place,  according  to  Michael  Davitt 
in  "Within  the  Pale,"  went  about  bless- 
ing  the   murderers. 

Some  notion  of  the  enormous  wealth 
uselessly  amassed  by  the  Russian  Church 
in  a  country  subject  to  periodical  dis- 
tress and  famine  may  be  gathered  from 
the  following  news  letter  from  St.  Peters- 
burg, printed  in  the  New  York  Sun, 
Sunday.  August  31st,  1913: 

"The  hoarded  wealth  of  the  Russian 
monasteries  and  convents  is  certainly 
immense,  although  it  may  not  reach  the 
fabulous  aggregate  of  $4,000,000,000,  at 
which  popular  belief  persists  in  estimat- 
ing the  gold  and  jewels  which  the  eight 
hundred  and  seventy-three  recognized 
religious  establishments  in  the  empire 
have  amassed  in  the  course  of  cen- 
turies. 

"The  Duma  when  considering  this 
year's  budget  of  the  Holy  Synod  insisted 
on  an  inquiry  being  made  into  the  re- 
sources of  the  religious  associations. 
The  results  were  surprising,  for  accord- 
ing to  official  reports  the  private  mov- 
able property  of  all  these  institutions 
only  amounted  to  $30,657,500.  Their  total 
annual  income  was  placed  at  $10,000,000 
and  their  expenditure  at  $9,000,000,  $3,- 
500,€00  of  which  was  put  down  as  the 
cost   of  maintenance  of  the  archbishops 


178  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

and  the  monastic  fraternities.  The  value 
of  the  land  owned  by  monasteries  and 
convents   was    estimated   at    $104,500,000. 

"It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  no 
one  believes  these  figures  to  be  anywhere 
near  the  truth.  It  is  pointed  out  that 
a  great  number  of  richly  bejeweled 
saints'  images  which  are  well  known  to 
the  public  are  worth  upward  of  $500,000 
each.  Common  report  places  the  wealth 
of  the  famous  Troitzka  monastery  at 
$325,000,000,  and  its  possessions  in  dia- 
monds alone  are  estimated  at  $12,500,000." 

In  Poland  we  And  similar  conditions. 
Campbell  in  his  "Pleasures  of  Hope"  says 
that  "freedom  shrieked  as  Kosciusko 
fell,"  but  by  all  accounts  the  Polish  Hath- 
naught  did  not  lose  much  when  his 
country  was  partitioned  by  Prussia, 
Russia,    and   Austria. 

In  the  collected  "Political  Writings" 
of  Richard  Cobden,  article  "Poland,"  we 
read  "that,  down  to  the  partition  of  their 
territory,  about  nineteen  out  of  every 
twenty  of  the  inhabitants  were  slaves; 
possessing  no  rights,  civil  or  political — 
that  about  one  in  every  twenty  was  a 
nobleman — and  this  body  of  nobles 
formed  the  very  worst  aristocracy  of 
ancient  or  modern  times;  putting  up  and 
pulling  down  their  kings  at  pleasure; 
passing  selfiijh  laws  which  gave  them  the 
power  of  life  and  death  over  their  serfs, 
whom  they  sold  and  bought  like  horses 
or  dogs;  usurping,  to  each  of  themselves, 
the  privileges  of  a  petty  sovereign,  and 
denying  to  all  besides  the  meanest  rights 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  179 

of  human  beings;  and  scorning  all  pur- 
suits as  degrading,  except  that  of  the 
sword,  they  engaged  in  incessant  wars 
with  neighbouring  states,  or  they  plunged 
their  own  country  Into  all  the  horrors 
of  anarchy,  for  the  purpose  of  giving 
employment  to  themselves  and  their  de- 
pendents." 

Cobden  continues:  "The  mass  of  the 
people  were  serfs,  who  had  no  legal  pro- 
tection and  no  political  rights,  who  en- 
joyed no  power  over  property  of  any 
kind,  and  who  possessed  less  security  of 
life  and  limb  than  has  been  lately  ex- 
tended to  the  cattle  of  this  island  by  the 
act  of  Parliament  against  cruelty  to 
animals." 

Kosciusko  fought  under  Washington 
for  American  independence.  It  is  to  be 
hoped  that  in  his  attempt  to  reestablish 
the  Polish  nation  he  was  actuated  by  a 
desire  to  make  his  people  free  in  every 
sense  of  the  word,  in  which  event  it 
may  be  that  Campbell  was  not  indulg- 
ing in  poetic  license  when  he  said  that 
"freedom   shrieked  as   Kosciusko   fell." 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

BROTHER   JONATHAN    AND   UNCLE 
SAM. 

Here  and  there  in  the  homes  of  those 
fond  of  the  antique  one  sees  the  old  spin- 
ning- wheel,  mute  evidence  of  the  primi- 
tive domestic  beginnings  of  American  in- 
dustry. Now  the  smokestack  is  seen  in 
every  hamlet  in  the  land  and  the  Ameri- 
can manufacturer,  a  lineal  descendant  of 
the  house  of  Hathnaught,  is  rapidly  dis- 
tancing competitors  even  in  England  and 
Germany. 

Brother  Jonathan  Hathnaught,  when 
he  began  laying  his  humble  foundation  of 
American  industry,  was  beset  with  all  the 
vexations  incident  to  the  theocracy  of 
Colonial  New  England  when  the  minister 
was  even  more  powerful  than  the  gov- 
ernor. 

"According  to  the  custom  established 
in  Massachusetts,"  says  Richard  Hildreth 
(History  of  the  United  States),  the 
Church  and  State  were  most  intimately 
blended.  The  Magistrates  and  General 
Court,  aided  by  the  advice  of  the  elders, 
claimed  and  exercised  a  supreme  control 
In  spiritual  as  well  as  temporal  matters; 
while   even    in    matters    purely    temporal 

180 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  181 

the  elders  were  consulted  on  all  impor- 
tant questions.  .  .  .  Besides  the  Sun- 
day service,  protracted  to  a  great  length 
there  were  frequent  lectures  on  week 
days,  an  excess  of  devotion  unreasonable 
in  an  infant  colony,  and  threatening  the 
interruption  of  necessary  labour."  Hil- 
dreth  might  have  added  that  this  "excess 
of  devotion"  did  not  prevent  occasional 
scandal  as  shown  by  Hawthorne's  "Scar- 
let Letter"  in  the  relations  of  Hester 
Prynne  and  the  young  minister,  Arthur 
Dimmesdale. 

In  addition  to  religious  distinctions, 
Hildreth  says,  there  were  others  of  a  tem- 
poral character  "transferred  from  that 
system  of  semi-feudal  English  Society  in 
which  the  Colonists  had  been  born  and 
bred." 

"A  discrimination,"  he  goes  on  to  say, 
"between  gentlemen  and  those  of  inferior 
condition  was  carefully  kept  up.  Only 
gentlemen  were  entitled  to  the  prefix  of 
'Mr.';  their  number  was  quite  small,  and 
deprivation  of  the  right  to  be  so  address- 
ed was  inflicted  as  a  punishment.  Good 
man  or  good  woman,  by  contraction 
'goody,'  was  the  address  of  inferior  per- 
sons. .  .  .  All  amusements  were  pro- 
scribed; all  gayety  seemed  to  be  regarded 
as  a  sin."  If  one  slandered  the  govern- 
ment or  churches  or  wrote  home  discour- 
aging letters,  the  punishment  called  for 
whipping,  cropping  of  ears,  and  banish- 
ment. 

It  was  in  this  great  state  monastery  of 
Puritanism  where  the  joyous  side  of  na- 


182  DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT 

ture  and  even  the  natural  affections  were 
suppressed,  and  the  conventions  that 
breed  deceit,  hypocrisy,  and  oppression 
were  fostered,  that  Jonathan  Hathnaught 
in  the  breathing  spells  between  prayer 
meetings  and  week-day  devotions  found- 
ed American  industrial  life. 

American  industrial  supremacy  is  due 
not  only  to  the  enterprise  of  Jonathan, 
but  to  an  unexampled  mechanical  genius 
and  the  development  of  inventions.  Rich- 
ard Cobden,  in  an  article  on  "America," 
in  his  "Political  Writings,"  bears  witness 
to  this. 

"The  Americans,"  he  says,  "possess  a 
quicker  mechanical  genius  than  even  our- 
selves (such,  again,  was  the  case  with 
our  ancestors  in  comparison  with  the 
Dutch),  as  witness  their  patents,  and  the 
improvements  for  which  we  are  indebted 
to  individuals  of  that  country  in  mechan- 
ics— such  as  spinning,  engraving,  etc. 
We  gave  additional  speed  to  our  ships  by 
Improving  upon  the  naval  architecture  of 
the  Dutch;  and  the  similitude  again  ap- 
plies to  the  superiority  which,  in  com- 
parison with  the  British  models,  the 
Americans  have,  for  all  the  purposes  of 
activity  and  economy,  imparted  to  their 
vessels." 

American  industry  has  been  greatly  de- 
veloped by  improving  the  means  of  trans- 
portation, and  Cobden  contrasts  the  en- 
thusiasm with  which  the  Americans  have 
established  railroads  with  the  indifferent 
if  not  hostile  attitude  of  the  parliament 
of  his  own  country. 


DENNIS  HATHNAUOHT  183 

"The  London  and  Birmingham  Com- 
pany," says  Cobden,  "after  spending  up- 
wards of  forty  thousand  pounds  in  at- 
tempting to  obtain  for  its  undertaking  the 
sanction  of  the  Legislature,  was  unsuc- 
cessful in  tVip  House  of  Lords." 

Cobden  gives  the  following  extract  from 
the  evidence  taken  before  the  committee 
of  those  titled  boobies: 

"Do  you  know  the  name  of  Lady  Has- 
tings' place?  How  near  to  it  does  your 
line  go?  Taking  the  look  out  of  the  prin- 
cipal rooms  of  the  house,  does  it  run  in 
front  of  the  principal  rooms?  How  far 
from  the  house  is  the  point  where  it  be- 
comes visible?  That  would  be  a  quarter 
of  a  mile?  Could  the  engines  be  heard 
in  the  house  at  that  distance?  Is  there 
any  cutting  or  embankment  there?  Is  It 
in  sight  of  the  house?  Looking  to  the 
country  is  it  not  possible  that  the  line 
could  be  taken  at  a  greater  distance  from 
the  residence  of  Lady  Hastings?" 

Think  of  it,  because  an  idle,  useless, 
and  aimless  woman  of  title  might  have 
her  slumbers  disturbed  by  the  toot  of  a 
passing  train,  rapid  transit  had  to  be  de- 
layed in  England.  It  is  small  wonder 
that  patient  old  John  Bull  is  at  last 
awakening  to  the  necessity  of  abolishing 
this  house  of  titled  ninnies  which  has  an 
hereditary  right  to  hold  back  the  nation's 
progress. 

Even  in  Colonial  days,  American  en- 
terprise had  excited  the  jealousy  of  the 
British  and  the  obnoxious  stamp  act  and 
other  exactions  led  to  the  American  Revo- 


184  DENNm  HATUNAUaUT 

lution,  which  was  basically  an  econom- 
ic insurrection,  notwithstanding  the  flap- 
doodle utterances  of  Fourth  of  July  ora- 
tors. Within  fifty  years  after  this  event, 
American  industries  had  grown  to  such 
an  extent  as  to  bear  comparison  with 
those  of  England. 

In  the  "American  Almanack"  for  1835, 
as  quoted  by  Cobden,  we  find  that  the 
exports  from  the  United  States  for  the 
year  ending  Sept.  25,  1833,  amounted  to 
$90,140,000,  about  twenty  millions  sterling 
of  English  money.  The  British  exports 
for  the  same  period  were  47,000,000 
pounds,  of  which  36,000,000  were  of  home 
commodities  or  manufactures,  whilst  the 
remaining  11,000,000  consisted  of  foreign 
and  colonial  produce. 

"Now,"  says  Cobden,  "in  order  to  in- 
stitute a  fair  comparison  between  the  re- 
spective trades  of  the  two  countries,  it 
will  be  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  that 
at  the  above  period,  the  population  of 
America  was  about  14,000,000,  whilst  that 
of  the  British  empire  may  be  reckoned  to 
have  been  25,500,000."  Cobden  adds  that 
if  we  note  that  2,000,000  of  the  American 
population  were  negroes,  the  commerce 
was  decidedly  in  favor  of  the  United 
States.  Manufactures  that  had  an  early 
and  rapid  development  were  shipbuilding, 
the  boot  and  .shoe,  paper,  cordage,  nails, 
and  furniture  industries.  The  first  growth 
of  these  was  in  New  England,  and  much 
of  It  domestic  manufacture,  unconnected 
with  factory  labour,  Cobden  observes.  In- 
deed,  we   may  remark  it  was  a  familiar 


DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT  185 

Sight  less  than  thirty  years  ago,  before 
boot  and  shoe  making  machinery  revo- 
lutionized the  business,  to  find  Hath- 
naughts,  fathers  and  sons,  in  their  own 
homes  or  in  small  bandbox-like  work- 
shops busy  making  footwear. 

Cobden's  observations  are  all  the  more 
remarkable  when  one  recalls  that  in  1807, 
twenty-eight  years  before,  the  "embargo" 
had  paralyzed  trade.  "The  sound  of  the 
caulking  hammer,"  says  John  Bach  Mc- 
Master,  in  his  "History  of  the  People  of 
the  United  States,"  "was  no  longer  heard 
in  the  shipyards.  The  sail-lofts  were  de- 
serted; the  rope-walks  were  closed;  ttie 
cartmen  had  nothing  to  do.  In  a  twink- 
ling the  price  of  every  commodity  went 
down,  and  the  price  of  every  foreign  com- 
modity went  up.  But  no  wages  were 
earned,  no  business  was  done,  and  money 
almost  ceased  to  circulate."  The  gov- 
ernment, business  men,  and  workingmen 
suffered  immense  losses.  Thousands  be- 
came bankrupt,  the  newspapers  were  full 
of  insolvent-debtor  notices,  and  post  of- 
fices and  cross-road  posts  had  advertise- 
ments of  sheriffs'  sales. 

"In  the  cities,"  says  McMaster,  "the 
jails  were  not  large  enough  to  hold  the 
debtors.  At  New  York  during  1809,  thir- 
teen hundred  men  were  imprisoned  for 
no  other  crime  than  being  ruined  by  the 
embargo. 

"A  traveller  who  saw  the  city  in  this 
day  of  distress  assures  us  that  it  looked 
like  a  town  ravaged  by  pestilence.  The 
counting-houses  were  shut  or  advertised 


186  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

to  let.  The  coffee  houses  were  almost 
empty — the  streets  along  the  water  front 
were  almost  deserted.  The  ships  were 
dismantled;  their  decks  were  cleared, 
their  hatches  were  battened  down.  Not  a 
box,  not  a  cask,  not  a  barrel,  not  a  bale 
was  to  be  seen  on  the  wharves,  where 
the  grass  had  begun  to  grow  luxuriantly. 
A  year  later  eleven  hundred  and  fifty 
were  confined  for  debts  under  twenty-five 
dollars,  and  were  clothed  by  the  Humane 
Society."  Wages  in  those  days,  accord- 
ing to  McMaster,  averaged  about  one  dol- 
lar a  day. 

Cobden's  tribute  to  the  mechanical 
genius  of  Americans  makes  it  easy  to 
understand  the  marvellous  growth  of 
American  industries.  That  growth  may' 
be  best  studied  by  turning  to  encyclopedic 
articles  on  the  various  items  of  manu- 
facture— cotton,  woollens,  shipbuilding, 
cordage,  weaving,  spinning,  boots  and 
shoes,  iron,  steel,  and  the  like.  Its  history 
has  also  been  made  the  subject  of  gov- 
ernmental inquiry,  and  among  special 
works  treating  of  the  subject  may  be 
mentioned  Wright's  "Industrial  Evolution 
of  the  United  States." 

Jonathan  Hathnaught  and  his  Uncle 
Samuel  hold  honourable  places  In  the  his- 
tory of  labour.  From  earliest  times  we 
read,  men  have  made  shoes  in  Lynn,  and 
Fall  River  and  Lowell  long  ago  became 
the  great  centers  of  the  textile  trade.  In 
the  International  Encyclopedia,  under  the 
head  "Manufactures"  wo  find  that  the 
jealousy   of   the   English   long   prevented 


DENNIS  IIATHNAUGHT  187 

our  budding  manufacturers  from  making 
use  of  the  Hargreaves  and  Arkwright 
spinning  machinery  and  threw  every  pos- 
sible obstacle  in  the  way  of  American 
native  industries  so  English  trade  might 
control  the  market. 

President  Wilson  and  his  supporters 
have  revised  the  tariff  upon  a  "revenue 
only"  basis.  This  brings  out  prominently 
the  fact  that  our  tariff  was  originally 
designed  to  build  up  our  so-called  infant 
industries.  Those  "infants,"  tariff  reform- 
ers say,  have  been  nourished  so  well  upon 
the  tariff  milk  that  they  have  become 
giants — trusts,  and  to  some  extent  agen- 
cies for  the  restraint  of  trade. 

Just  how  a  trust  is  called  into  being 
may  be  studied  in  Ida  Tarbell's  "History 
of  the  Standard  Oil  Company."  This 
company  was  the  first  great  trust,  and 
continues  to  be  the  most  powerful  one. 
It  is  conducted  with  a  masterful  grasp 
of  an  opportunity  that  pales  the  power 
and  achievements  of  Napoleon. 

Socialists  of  the  evolutionary  school 
welcome  the  trusts  which  have  now  in- 
vaded all  industries,  and  regard  these 
great  corporations  as  a  step  in  the  di- 
rection of  the  ultimate  state  control  of 
the  means  of  production,  distribution, 
transportation,  and  communication. 

Trusts  have  been  made  the  subject  of 
governmental  investigation  largely  be- 
cause of  charges  of  unfair  discrimination 
in  their  favour  by  railroads  granting  re- 
bates, and  in  May,  1913,  a  Congressional 
Committee  conducted  an  inquiry  into  the 
workings  of  the  Steel  Trust. 


188  DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT 

Various  attempts  to  dissolve  trusts  have 
been  made,  but  with  little  apparent  suc- 
cess. By  the  very  intricacies  of  their  or- 
ganization they  appear  to  be  Protean  in 
their  nature  and  disappear  through  the 
exit  marked  "Dissolution,"  only  to  re- 
appear at  the  entrance  marked  "Resolved 
into  our  original  companies."  But  these 
companies  stick  together  like  Corsican 
brothers,  and  the  dissolution  is  apparently 
hardly  more  than  a  name. 

It  is  this  concentration  of  wealth  in 
the  hands  of  a  few  and  the  irresponsibility 
of  these  few  to  the  people  at  large  that 
has  led  to  the  agitation  for  the  state 
regulation  of  trusts,  and  to  outbursts 
challenging  the  claim  that  inheritance  is 
a  natural  right,  and  contending  that  it  is 
a  legitimate  province  of  government  to 
turn  great  fortunes  back  to  the  state  bv 
legislation.  In  other  words,  there  is  a 
growing  disposition  to  make  wealth  as- 
sume a  definite  responsibility  and  not  be 
governed  as  in  the  old  days  by  the  whim 
of  the  possessor.  It  is  a  modern  version 
of  the  old  cry  of  the  utilitarian  Bentham, 
"The  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  num- 
ber." 

George  Frisbie  Hoar,  long  a  Senator 
from  Massachusetts,  in  an  address  before 
the  Chickatawbut  Club  of  Boston,  shortly 
before  his  death,  instanced  the  following 
as  evils  of  the  trusts: 

(1)  Destruction  of  competition. 

(2)  The   management   of   industries   by 

absentee  capital. 

(3)  Destruction  of  local  public  spirit. 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  189 

(4)  Fraudulent  capitalization. 

(5)  Secrecy. 

(6)  Management  for  the  private  benefit 

of  the  officers. 

(7)  The  power  to  corrupt  elections,  and 

in    some    cases    to    corrupt    the 
courts. 

(8)  Indifference  to  public  sentiment. 
There   are   three   tariff   schools   in    the 

United  States:  Protectionists  who  believe 
In  a  high  tariff,  those  who  believe  In  a 
tariff  for  revenue  only,  and  free  traders. 
In  public  >  life  there  are  few  who  have 
dared  openly  to  advocate  free  trade.  Po- 
litically therefore  we  hear  of  protection- 
ists and  tariff  reformers  who  believe  in  a 
tariff  for  revenue  only. 

Taxes  are  levied  for  the  support  of  city, 
county,  state  and  national  government 
and,  according  to  tariff  reformers,  should 
be  exacted  only  to  defray  the  actual  ex- 
penses of  government.  Internal  revenue 
is  obtained  by  taxing  whiskey,  beer,  and 
tobacco.  Tariff  taxes  and  duties  are  col- 
lected at  "ports  of  entry."  Millions  ac- 
crue annually  to  government  through 
tariff  taxes,  and  it  is  the  contention  of 
low  tariff  advocates  that  this  contracts 
the  volume  of  the  currency  and  leads  to 
panics.  Protection,  they  declare,  keeps 
up  the  prices  on  goods,  fosters  trusts  and 
corners,  and  makes  paupers  on  the  one 
hand  and  millionaires  on  the  other. 

Laws  of  supply  and  demand  regulate 
the  prices  of  goods  and  establish  the 
standard  of  wages.  Scarcity  of  a  thing 
enhances  its  price;  abundance  of  a  thing 


190  DENNIS  HATHNAUOHT 

lowers  Its  price.  This  holds  true  also  of 
labour.  As  Henry  George  used  to  say, 
when  two  men  seek  one  job,  wages  are 
low;  when  two  jobs  seek  one  man,  wages 
are  high.  If,  as  protectionists  assert, 
tariff  reduction  would  open  American 
markets  to  English  goods,  English  wages 
would  increase.  Density  of  population, 
too,  has  a  great  effect  on  labour. 

Opponents  of  the  protective  system 
charge  that  protection  killed  American 
foreign  commerce  by  fettering  it  with  its 
system.  It  is  held  that  liberty  of  ex- 
change, or  free  trade,  is  a  natural  right 
and  that  tariff  walls  interfere  with 
this  right  and  discourage  commercial  en- 
terprise. Labour  creates  wealth;  restrict- 
ing trade  contracts  labour's  opportunities 
and  reduces  wages,  according  to  econo- 
mists that  favour  tariff  reduction  or  its 
abolition. 

It  is  a  noteworthy  fact  in  the  history  of 
economic  development  in  the  United 
States  that  American  industries  have  tak- 
en an  immense  jump  forward  as  the  re- 
sult of  the  emancipation  of  the  black  man 
— Sambo  Hathnaught. 

Professor  Cairnes,  in  his  work  "The 
Slave  Power,"  finds  three  fundamental 
defects  in  slave  labour — it  is  compulsory 
and  therefore  not  given  willingly;  it  is 
unskilful;  it  is  lacking  in  versatility.  It 
therefore  follows  that  slave  labour  is 
only  advantageous  when  concentrated  and 
slaves  pursue  unskilled  vocations. 

In  his  "Democracy  in  America,"  De 
Tocqueville,  speaking  of  the  introduction 


DENNIS  H AT HN AUGHT  191 

of  the  negro  slave  into  the  American 
Colonies,  says:  "Slavery,  as  we  shall  after- 
wards show,  dishonours  labour;  it  intro- 
duces idleness  into  society,  and  with  idle- 
ness ignorance  and  pride,  luxury  and  dis- 
tress. It  enervates  the  powers  of  the 
mind,  and  benumbs  the  activity  of  man. 
The  influence  of  slavery,  united  to  the 
English  character,  explains  the  manners 
and  social  condition  of  the  Southern 
States.     .     .     . 

"It  is  not  for  the  good  of  the  negroes, 
but  for  that  of  the  whites,  that  measures 
are  taken  to  abolish  slavery  in  the  United 
States.  The  first  negroes  were  imported 
into  Virginia  about  the  year  1621.  In 
America  therefore,  as  well  as  on  the  rest 
of  the  globe,  slavery  originated  in  the 
South.  Thence  it  spread  from  one  settle- 
ment to  another;  but  the  number  of 
slaves  diminished  toward  the  Northern 
States,  and  the  negro  population  was  al- 
ways very  limited  in  New  England. 

"A  century  had  scarcely  elapsed  since 
the  foundation  of  the  Colonies  when  the 
attention  of  the  planters  was  struck  by 
the  extraordinary  fact  that  the  Provinces 
which  were  comparatively  destitute  of 
slaves  increased  in  population,  in  wealth 
and  in  prosperity  more  rapidly  than  those 
which  contained  the  greatest  number  of 
negroes.  In  the  former,  however,  the  in- 
habitants were  obliged  to  cultivate  the 
soil  themselves  or  by  hired  labourers;  in 
the  latter  they  were  furnished  with  hands 
for  which  they  paid  no  wages;  yet,  al- 
though labour  and  expense  were  on  the 


192  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

one  side,  and  ease  with  economy  on  the 
other,  the  former  were  in  possession  of 
the  most  advantageous  system.  The  con- 
sequence seemed  to  be  the  more  difficult 
to  explain,  since  the  settlers,  who  all  be- 
longed to  the  same  European  race,  had 
the  same  habits,  the  same  civilization,  the 
same  laws,  and  their  shades  of  difference 
were  extremely  slight." 

Slavery,  however,  created  differences 
for  the  Southerner,  De  Tocqueville  says, 
acquiring  through  his  possession  of  slaves 
the  idea  that  he  is  born  to  command  and 
who  expects  to  be  obeyed  without  resist- 
ance, becomes  supercilious,  hasty,  "iras- 
cible, violent  and  ardent  in  his  desires. 
Impatient  of  obstacles,  but  easily  dis- 
couraged if  he  cannot  succeed  upon  his 
first  attempt." 

The  Northerner,  on  the  other  hand, 
having  no  slaves  or  even  servants  about 
him  in  childhood,  grows  self-reliant  and 
learns  to  supnly  his  own  wants. 

Since  the  emancipation  of  the  slaves  as 
a  result  of  the  civil  war,  the  old  South  has 
disappeared,  and  a  new  industrial  South 
Is  making  for  prosperity  and  building  up 
a  race  of  self-reliant  and  earnest  men. 
The  old  Southerner,  whom  Mark  Twain 
declares  in  his  "Life  on  the  Mississippi" 
built  up  his  ideas  of  life  and  chivalry  on 
the  basis  of  Sir  Walter  Scott's  Waverley 
Novels,  again  to  quote  words  of  the  glo- 
rious Mark  used  in  another  connection, 
"is  a  thing  of  the  dead  and  pathetic  past." 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

DENNIS  SETTING  HIS  HOUSE  JN  OR- 
DER. 

Dennis  Hathnaught  is  sliowing  unmis- 
takable signs  of  determination  to  set  up 
governmental  housekeeping  for  himself. 
In  ancient  days  and  throughout  the  Mid- 
dle Ages,  he  was  subject  to  kicks  and 
cuffs  and  lashings,  with  no  reward  for 
his  labour.  Little  by  little  all  that  has 
been  changed.  Slavery  gradually  merged 
into  serfdom  and  serfdom  into  paid  la- 
bour. As  time  went  on,  Dennis  exhibited 
greater  and  greater  interest  in  govern- 
ment, and  slowly  grew  into  an  enfran- 
chised citizen  with  a  humble,  but  ever- 
increasing  right  to  a  voice  in  affairs. 

This  development  of  the  Hathnaughts 
from  slavery  to  economic  importance  in 
government  had  its  birth  in  Suggestion. 
Master  minds  in  their  ranks  by  insinua- 
tion, innuendo,  or  open  preaching  as  in 
the  case  of  Wamba  to  Gurth,  awakened 
the  dumbwits  among  the  Hathnaughts. 
Conversation  and  stories  of  returning  sol- 
diers, itinerant  tinkers  and  peddlers,  run- 
away slaves  and  serfs,  concerning  move- 
ments taking  place  elsewhere,  all  had  an 
effect   through   Suggestion   upon   the   en- 

193 


194  DENNIS  H AT HN AUGHT 

slaved  masses  and  led  them,  in  imitation 
of  their  fellows,  to  revolt  and  to  demand 
amelioration  of  conditions  and  a  share  in 
the  harvests  they  reaped.  Since  the  in- 
vention of  printing  the  work  of  awaken- 
ing the  people  has  been  marvellously 
accelerated. 

Every  mental  operation  is  in  the  na- 
ture of  Suggestion.  In  works  on  psy- 
chology you  will  read  of  consciousness, 
sub-consciousness,  somnambulism,  hyp- 
notism, perception,  understanding,  mem- 
ory, habit,  imagination,  judgment,  con- 
ception, sensations,  sight,  touch,  feelings, 
scent,  hearing,  irritability,  desires,  ad- 
miration, contempt,  compassion,  emo- 
tions, attention,  association  of  ideas,  voli- 
tion, motives,  reason,  relativity  of  knowl- 
edge, resemblances,  right  and  wrong, 
sagacity  (especially  in  animals),  sympa- 
thy, thought,  truth,  vision — all  subject 
to  Suggestion  growing  out  of  the  myste- 
rious processes  of  the  mind  whereby  one 
fact  in  association  with  another  or  by 
contrast  with  it,  brings  forth  the  Sug- 
gestion that  later  becomes  a  new  incen- 
tive to  action  and  further  progress.  Even 
speech  originated  In  suggestion  if  the 
onomatopoeic  theory  is  correct — that  lan- 
guage owes  its  origin  to  man's  attempt 
in  the  beginning  to  adapt  words  to 
sounds.  Hiss,  cackle,  caw,  buzz,  are  in- 
stances of  sound  imitation. 

Like  everything  else,  government  is  the 
result  of  Evolution  and  Suggestion.  No 
man  or  group  of  men  has  yet  been  able 
to  frame  a  Constitution  or  Code  of  Laws 


DEN  N I  a  HATHNAUGJIT  195 

that  may  become  the  fixed,  unalterable 
source  of  g-overnmental  powers  for  all 
time.  Even  our  own  Constitution  that 
we  regard  as  reverently  as  the  Carthag- 
inians did  the  sacred  garment  of  Tanit, 
does  not  always  work  out  the  problem  as 
the  Fathers  intended  it  should. 

Human  improvement  is  born  of  Sug- 
gestion growing  out  of  Precedent,  and 
Liberty  is  the  result  of  many  conces- 
sions often  wrung  painfully  from  the 
ruling  classes.  Were  we  to  reestablish 
suddenly  the  slavery  of  Greece  and 
Rome,  every  man,  woman,  and  child 
would  see  the  injustice  and  iniquity  of 
it,  for  we  now  possess  the  historic  sense 
and  the  historic  background  to  judge  It 
by.  But  many  fine  men  and  women  of 
antiquity,  with  nothing  different  to  look 
backward  to,  approved  of  slavery  and 
saw  no  injustice  in  an  idle  group  reap- 
ing the  full  benefit  of  the  labour  of  an 
active   and  enslaved  class. 

The  best  of  all  Constitutions  is  the 
British  Constitution  for  it  has  the  ad- 
vantage of  not  being  a  set  and  written 
document  and  may  thus  grow  by  acces- 
sions. It  is  in  reality  nothing  but  the 
digested  spirit  of  laws  safeguarding  hu- 
man rights,  such  as  the  Magna  Charta, 
the  immortal  habeas  corpus  act  which 
guarantees  a  person  against  unjust  seiz- 
ure and  incarceration;  right  of  trial  by 
jury  in  open  court,  and  the  right  to  chal- 
lenge men  called  to  the  panel;  religious 
freedom  and  toleration;  right  of  assem- 
bly and  petition;  the  tendency  toward  an 


196  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

equitable  adjustment  of  taxation;  grad- 
ual abolition  of  exemptions  and  privi- 
leges enjoyed  by  the  nobility  and  clergy; 
procedure  under  due  process  of  law  so 
that  citizens  may  not  fear  imprisonment 
or  confinement  in  madhouses  without 
form  of  trial  or  the  procuring  of  a  writ 
or  warrant. 

Dennis  Hathnaught  is  working  through 
Trades-Unions,  Socialism,  and  Syndical- 
ism, as  well  as  through  the  old  political 
parties,  which  he  is  beginning  to  suspect, 
are  simply  nest-builders  for  political 
cuckoos.  If  any  one  ever  adapts  Othello 
to  the  labour  question,  Dennis  as  Othel- 
lo will  have  the  professional  politician 
for   his  lago  or  false   friend. 

In  a  book  purposely  kept  within  short 
compass,  it  would  be  impossible  to  dis- 
cuss exhaustively  all  the  phases  of 
economic  evolution,  and  in  our  account 
here  of  Trade-Unionism,  Socialism,  and 
Syndicalism,  we  shall  touch  only  upon 
the  surface,  giving  the  untrained  reader 
just  enough  to  enable  him  to  go  intelli- 
gently into  a  deeper  study  of  the  move- 
ments. 

Trades-Unionism  may  be  said  to  date 
from  the  first  conference  of  slaves,  im- 
patient to  shed  their  chains.  In  Eugene 
Sue's  curious  work,  "The  Mysteries  of 
the  People;  or  History  of  a  Proletarian 
Family  Across  the  Ages,"  we  find  refer- 
ence to  the  "Sons  of  the  Mistletoe,"  an 
organization  of  Gallic  Hathnaughts  in 
Ancient  Pvomo  which  met  in  a  cave, 
members     often     dragging     their    heavy 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  197 

chains  to  the  meeting  place.  Their  aim 
was  to  throw  off  the  yoke  of  their  mas- 
ters, but  in  reality  it  was  an  economic 
movement  and  may  be  cited  as  an  early 
example  of  the  trades-union. 

Again,  the  agrarian  agitation  on  the 
part  of  the  plebeian  population  of  Rome 
itself,  led  to  the  organization  of  guilds 
that  had  in  them  the  germ  of  trades 
unionism   and   socialism. 

In  the  Middle  Ages  the  Guilds  were  or- 
ganizations of  tradesmen,  but  with  this 
difference — they  included  masters  as  well 
as  workmen.  For  the  student  curious  to 
trace  the  history  of  these  now  powerful 
organizations,  we  may  refer  to  Thorold 
Rogers'  "Six  Centuries  of  Work  and 
Wages,"  Gibbins'  "Economic  History  of 
England,"  Webbs'  "History  of  Trades 
Unionism,"  Brentano's  "Guilds  and 
Trades  Unions,"  and  Fawcett's  "Political 
Economy."  Professor  Fawcett  was  a 
member  of  the  "Social  Science  Commit- 
tee on  Trade  Societies,"  which  made  an 
exhaustive  report  on  the  general  subject 
of  workmen's  organizations  which  is  still 
a  standard  authority.  This  report  was 
published  in  England  in   1860. 

Objects  of  unions  in  the  main  are  to 
regulate  the  hours  of  labour  and  to  set 
the  standard  of  wages.  The  unions  from 
the  very  beginning  of  their  history  have 
contended  for  the  right  to  control  the  ap- 
prentice system,  which  in  the  old  days 
constituted  a  kind  of  serfdom  in  which 
the  apprentice  was  bound  by  strict  arti- 
cles  of  indenture   to   serve     his    master 


198  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

while  learning-  a  trade.  Nowadays,  an 
apprentice  may  abandon  his  work  at  will, 
but  in  earlier  times  he  was  liable  to  the 
law.  The  idea  of  the  unions  in  control- 
ling the  apprentice  system  was  to  keep 
trades  from  becoming  overcrowded,  and 
so  well  was  this  done  by  the  unions  that 
In  the  city  of  Lynn,  Mass.,  the  backbone 
of  the  shoemakers'  unions  and  their  mon- 
opoly of  the  labour  supply  was  not 
broken  until  the  importation  of  cheap 
Italian  and  Armenian  labour  led  the  man- 
ufacturers to  the  breaking  in  of  green 
hands  when  their  skilled  workmen  were 
on  strike. 

With  the  rise  of  an  independent  and 
class-conscious  working  class  in  England, 
after  the  "Black  Death,"  when  labour 
was  exceedingly  scarce,  the  Hathnaughts 
asserted  a  right  to  have  a  word  in  the 
matter  of  wages  and  hours  of  labour. 

Thorold  Rogers,  in  his  "Six  Centuries 
of  Work  and  Wages,"  calls  the  time  from 
the  peasants'  rebellion  in  1381  to  the 
reign  of  Henry  VIII,  "the  golden  age  of 
the  English  Labourer,"  for  his  fight  for 
recognition  led  to  better  wages,  shorter 
hours,  and  more  certainty  of  employ- 
ment. This,  too,  despite  the  fact  that  the 
government,  leagued  with  the  great  land 
owners,  endeavoured  to  stay  the  progress 
ot  labour  toward  independence  and  self- 
regulation. 

As  we  understand  the  trades  union  of 
today,  it  may  be  said  to  have  been  in  ex- 
istence for  four  hundred  years  approxi- 
mately, for  in  1548,  in  the  reign  of  Ed- 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  199 

ward  VI,  as  shown  by  the  statutes  of 
England,  a  law  was  aimed  against  work- 
men, who  had  combined  and  taken  an 
oath  to  do  only  certain  kinds  of  work 
and  to  regulate  the  method  of  doing 
It,  the  hours  and  the  compensation.  There 
Is  abundant  evidence  by  Froude,  Macau- 
lay,  and  other  historians  that  the  gov- 
ernment for  centuries  tried  to  control  la- 
bour arbitrarily,  and  it  was  not  until 
1824  that  it  became  legal  for  workmen 
through  organization  to  set  a  value  upon 
their  own  labour  and  to  have  a  say  about 
hours  and  other  conditions. 

The  Chartist  movement  in  England 
was  the  outgrowth  of  a  growing  sense 
of  independence  on  the  part  of  labour 
and  its  demand  for  political  rights. 
Chartism  has  a  literature  of  its  own  Be- 
sides being  incorporated  in  every  history 
of  the  early  years  of  Queen  Victoria's 
reign.  It  had  its  origin  in  a  state  of  low 
wages  accompanied  by  a  high  cost  of 
living.  The  agitation  raged  for  ten  years 
and  occasioned  great  public  excitement. 
Oddly  enough,  one  of  the  most  famous 
leaders  of  this  uprise  of  the  English  pro- 
letariat was  one  Feargus  O'Connor,  a 
celebrated  mob  orator  who  claimed  de- 
scent from  Brian  Boru.  The  agitation 
which  resulted  in  monster  petitions  to 
parliament,  occasioned  great  alarm  In 
conservative  England,  and  disturbances 
led  to  bloodshed. 

Demands  of  the  Chartists  as  we  view 
such  matters  today,  were  very  moderate. 
They  were  six  in  number — first,  annual 


200  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

Parliaments;  second,  Universal  Suffrage; 
third,  Vote  by  ballot;  fourth,  Equal  Elec- 
toral Districts;  fifth.  Abolition  of  Prop- 
erty Qualifications  for  members  of  Parlia- 
ment; sixth,  Payment  of  members  of 
Parliament. 

Most  of  these  demands  are  now  the 
law  of  the  land  and  labour  has  made  such 
headway  politically  that  we  have  the 
spectacle  of  sixty  labour  members  sit- 
ting in  the  British  Parliament,  and  con- 
stituting the  backbone  of  radical  legis- 
lation. 

The  initiative,  the  referendum,  the  re- 
call, employers'  liability  legislation,  com- 
pulsory insurance,  old-age  pensions,  wo- 
man suffrage,  commission  government, 
and  like  legislation  are  all  manifestations 
of  the  presence  of  Dennis  Hathnaught  in 
Congress,  Parliament,  Reichstag,  and 
Duma. 

Socialism  also  is  ancient  of  days.  Las- 
salle  calls  Heraclitus,  a  pre-Socratic 
Greek  philosopher  (535-475  B.  C),  the 
father  of  Socialism.  Many  of  the  early 
insurrections,  particularly  the  risings  un- 
der Spartacus  and  Wat  Tyler  were  so- 
ciaUstic  in  character,  but  it  has  been 
only  since  the  French  Revolution  that 
the  idea  of  social  equality  has  assumed 
a  political   importance. 

Rousseau  was  a  great  detached  teacher 
of  Socialism.  In  his  "Social  Contract"  he 
stirred  the  nation  with  his  famous  sen- 
tence, "Man  is  born  free  but  is  every- 
where enslaved."  In  this  work  he  ad- 
vanced  principles  that   made   his  book   a 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  201 

kind  of  Bible  to  the  revolutionists  and 
made  a  sharp  attack  upon  the  claim  of 
the  landowner  and  the  nobly  born  to  ex- 
clusive privilege  of  wielding  political 
power.  The  labourer  whose  toil  made  It 
possible  for  the  State  to  exist,  Rousseau 
maintained,  had  a  right  to  participate  in 
the   business   of   government. 

Henri  Alphonse  Esquiros,  a  French- 
man (1812-1876),  in  his  "Evangel  of  the 
People,"  pictures  Christ  as  a  socialist 
teacher  in  full  sympathy  with  the  Indus- 
trial revolutionary  movement.  This  was 
published  in  1840  and  its  author's  reward 
was  eight  months'  imprisonment  and  a 
fine  of  five  hundred  francs.  The  Prance 
of  that  day  wanted  no  preachers  of  rev- 
olution, least  of  all  economic  revolution 
through  the  medium  of  the  founder  of 
Christianity. 

Karl  Marx  was  the  founder  of  interna- 
tional socialism.  His  battle  cry,  "Work- 
Ingmen  of  the  World,  unite,"  is  still  the 
rallying  slogan  of  the  social  revolution 
whether  that  revolution  takes  the  form 
ot  trades-unionism,  socialism,  or  syndi- 
calism. His  great  work,  "Capital,"  dis- 
plays a  wonderful  grasp  upon  the  funda- 
m.entals  of  economics  and  the  knowledge 
he  shows  of  economic  literature  is  enor- 
mous and  intimate.  His  work  has  been 
translated  into  many  languages  and  be- 
sides epitomes  gotten  out  by  socialistic 
publishers,  there  is  available  in  English, 
a  good  translation  edited  by  FVed  En- 
gels. 

One    of    the    earliest    attempts    in    the 


202  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

United  States  to  bring  the  levelling  proc- 
ess to  bear  upon  the  classes  of  society 
was  the  Brook  Farm  experiment  in  which 
George  Ridley,  Nathaniel  Hawthorne, 
Albert  Brisbane,  Margaret  Fuller,  and 
some  other  of  the  noted  persons  of  the 
day  took  part.  Its  effort  to  achieve  equal- 
ity and  solve  the  vexed  labour  problem 
failed,  but  the  experiment,  besides  the 
usual  historical  accounts  that  preserve 
Its  memory,  is  immortalized  by  Haw- 
thorne in   "The  Blithedale   Romance." 

Frederick  Spielhagen,  in  his  novel, 
"Hammer  and  Anvil"  (1869),  gives  us  a 
study  of  the  warring  castes  of  Germany 
as  affected  by  the  peculiar  nature  of 
German  institutions.  We  must  choose 
whether  we  will  be  the  hammer  or  the 
anvil,  he  says,  and  tries  to  point  a  way 
out  by  declaring  that  it  shall  not  be 
hammer  or  anvil,  but  hammer  and  anvil, 
for,  he  says,  everything  and  every  hu- 
man being  is  both  at  once  and  every  mo- 
ment. 

In  Germany,  where  Socialism  has  had 
a  wonderful  expansion,  one  of  the  great 
leaders  was  August  Bebel.  In  his  "Wo- 
man under  Socialism,"  he  notes  the  im- 
portance of  the  female  sex  in  the  econ- 
omic evolution  of  the  race,  and  declares 
that  her  emancipation  and  perfect 
equality  with  man  is  the  goal  of 
all  social  development — a  foregone  con- 
clusion which  no  power  can  alter  or  set 
aside.  As  a  step  in  this  direction,  the 
rule  of  man  over  man,  and  capitalist  over 
workman,  he  declares,  must  be  abolished. 


DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT  203 

Then,  he  thinks,  will  come  the  Golden 
Age,  for  which  men  have  dreamed  for 
centuries,  and  with  the  end  of  class  rule, 
will  come  the  end  of  the  rule  of  man 
over  woman. 

Whatever  the  motive  of  titled  women 
in  taking  up  the  cause  of  militancy  and 
demanding'  the  ballot,  there  is  no  doubt 
that  the  great  feminist  movement  of  to- 
day is  an  outgrowth  of  socialistic  agita- 
tion. Olive  Schreiner,  in  her  notable 
work,  "Woman  and  Labour,"  calls  the 
feminist  movement  a  sex  revolt  against 
parasitism.  In  her  demand  that  woman 
shall  become  a  producer  and  a  worker, 
instead  of  becoming  a  doll  or  a  mere  pop- 
ulation increaser,  she  takes  her  place  be- 
side the  John  the  Baptists  of  Progress, 
who  are  crying  aloud  in  the  wilderness 
of   our   modern   industrial   world. 

Those  who  think  women  in  politics  a 
modern  phenomenon  would  do  well  to 
open  their  Livy  and  read  about  the  fu- 
rore caused  by  C,  Oppius  proposing  a 
law  in  Ancient  Rome,  long  before  the 
Christian  era,  forbidding  women  the  use 
of  golden  ornaments.  In  the  debate  that 
followed,  the  way  the  women  went  out 
into  the  highways  and  byways,  besieg- 
ing influential  men  and  agitating  for  the 
repeal  of  the  law,  would  put  cheer  into 
Mrs.  Pankhurst's  soul  during  a  hunger 
strike.  Every  "Jeremiah"  who  pours  out 
lamentations  against  "Maria"  and  her 
"Votes  for  Women"  militancy,  would  do 
well  to  read  these  luminous  pages  of 
Livy.    After  all,  it  may  be  that  militancy 


204  DENNIS  II ATHN AUGHT 

is  only  atavistic.  Our  modern  suffra- 
gettes may  be  descendants  of  those  old 
Roman   matrons. 

In  harmony  with  this  growing  femin- 
ist spirit  is  the  demand  for  the  single 
moral  standard  for  men  and  for  women. 
Mrs.  Hathnaught  is  not  only  demanding 
the  vote,  but  she  is  showing  an  impa- 
tience with  the  reckless  deductions  of 
sociological  scamps  and  ecclesiastical 
windbags  who  are  always  holding  inquis- 
itorial sessions  over  feminine  morals. 
There  should  be  some  legal  penalty  to 
reach  scoundrels  who  make  wholesale 
charges,  not  backed  by  evidence,  that 
girls  in  department  stores  eke  out  an  ad- 
ditional income  through  secret  prostitu- 
tion. Turn  around  is  fair  play,  and  it 
would  be  in  line  for  women  to  challenge 
these  critics  by  inquiring  into  their  own 
moral  standards  which,  as  frequent 
newspaper  exposures  show,  are  often 
more  or  less  mangy. 

There  is  some  truth  in  the  epigram 
that  mankind  may  be  divided  into  two 
classes — the  guilty  and  the  undetected.  A 
militant  branch  of  the  undetected  may 
be  called  the  Plying  Squadron  of  Virtue. 
The  mission  of  this  precious  corps  Is  to 
push  little  Miss  Foundout  and  her  lover, 
Mr.  Haha  You  Villain,  into  the  ranks  of 
the  guilty.  This  done,  they  sing  a  pean, 
for  the  triumph  of  the  righteous  and  the 
glory  of  the  good. 

Anti-suffragists  are  fond  of  dilating  on 
the  home,  yet  the  home  as  we  know  it,  is 
a  very  modern  institution.   They  go  into 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  205 

ecstacies  over  the  so-called  sweet  wo- 
manhood of  yesterday.  Yet  these  poor 
souls  were  hardly  more  than  sex  manni- 
kins  who  had  their  lovers  picked  out  for 
them  by  autocratic  fathers  and  whose  Ig- 
norance was  such  that  their  conversa- 
tion seldom  went  beyond  the  small  scan- 
dals and  the  society  flapdoodle  of  the 
boudoir.  In  that  charming  Scotch  Com- 
edy, Moffat's,  "Bunty  Pulls  the  Strings," 
there  is  a  fine  representation  of  the  old- 
fashioned  religious  home,  but  for  my  own 
part  I  would  rather  spend  a  week's  end 
in  jail  than  a  Sabbath  day  with  Tammas. 

Socialists  claim  to  have  suffered  im- 
mensely from  misrepresentation  and  prej- 
udice. The  Papal  authorities,  they  as- 
sert, have  organized  a  band  of  lay  Jesuits, 
the  Knights  of  Columbus,  to  fight  them 
on  the  ground  that  socialism  is  an  im- 
moral movement  that  threatens  the  home 
and  the  sanctity   of  marriage. 

In  Germany  the  movement  has  been 
combated  by  prosecution  and  imprison- 
ment, but  it  has  covered  the  prison  walls 
like  ivy  and  has  spread  itself  over  the 
land. 

Any  cut-and-dried  Utopian  programme 
for  the  righting  of  human  wrongs  is  best 
fought  by  reason  and  frank  discussion, 
and  not  by  hatred  and  intolerance.  It  13 
the  hardest  thing  in  the  world  to  make 
people  see  things  justly  and  impartially. 
The  best  of  us  either  condemn  or  con- 
done according  to  our  prejudices  or  pred- 
ilections. We  may  illustrate  our  point 
by  a  triangle: 


206 


DENNIS  HATHNAUOHT 


if 

/ 

/ 

\ 

// 

f 

\^ 

^/ 

J 

\o 

*/ 

s 

V 

?/ 

a 

v> 

'V 

\ 

6>^se   of=   ^/usTtce- 


He  who  has  prejudice  be  he  Con- 
servative or  Socialist,  will  always  look 
along  the  line  of  condemnation.  In  like 
manner  the  man  with  predilection  will 
excuse  or  condone.  But  he  who  looks 
down  from  the  angle  of  impartiality  can 
see  at  once  the  lines  of  condemnation 
and  condonation  as  well  as  the  sti'aight 
line  of  truth  that  leads  to  the  Base  or 
Justice. 

Socialism  aims  to  establish  the  coop- 
erative Commonwealth,  and  its  motto  is 
"To  each  according  to  his  deeds."  It 
would  level  class  distinctions,  make  the 
w'orld  a  great  body  of  producing  work- 
men, and  by  giving  every  man  the  full 
fruit  of  his  labour,  do  away  with  the 
wage  system  which  socialists  term  econ- 
omic slavery.  Under  this  system  the 
State  would  control  the  means  of  pro- 
duction, transportation,  and  distribution. 
In    the    view   of   the    Socialist   the   work- 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  207 

ingman  is  nothing  more  than  a  ticket  of 
leave  serf. 

Now  we  have  to  deal  with  Syndicalism 
and  Sabotage,  both  French  in  their  or- 
igin. Since  the  great  strike  in  Lawrence 
and  in  1913  with  the  strike  in  Paterson, 
N.  J.,  under  the  Industrial  Workers  of 
the  World,  we  have  heard  much  of  Syn- 
dicalism. In  the  last  few  years,  thanks 
to  the  ever-growing  interest  in  econom- 
ics, we  have  seen  many  volumes  on  the 
subject  issue  from  the  press. 

Socialism  contends  that  it  would  eman- 
cipate labour  by  gaining  control  of  the 
government;  Syndicalism  would  achieve 
a  like  result  by  getting  control  of  indus- 
tries through  the  medium  of  Unions.  So- 
cialism finds  its  weapon  in  the  ballot;  the 
Syndicalist,  in  the  general  strike  or  so- 
called  direct  action.  Sabotage  and  boy- 
cotting are  instruments  of  the  movement 
supplementary  to  the  general  strike. 

Discussing  the  new  movement,  the 
New  York  Evening  Post  quoted  one  of 
its  leaders  as  follows: 

"Fellow-workers,  you  want  an  eight- 
hour  day.  Well,  take  it,  and  when  you 
come  back  the  next  morning,  tell  the 
master  you  were  on  strike  four  hours 
yesterday. 

"You  want  to  get  possession  of  the  in- 
struments of  production?  You  are  in 
possession  already.  All  you  have  to  do 
Is  to  declare  you  own  the  factory  in 
which  you  work.  If  the  master  protests, 
lock  him  out.  You  say  you  don't  get 
the   full   value   of  your   toil?    Get  It,   do 


208  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

only  as  much  work  as  you  are  paid  for, 
and  go  slow  the  rest  of  the  time.  You 
say  the  machinery  ruins  your  health? 
Ruin  the  machinery  for  a  while.  You  say 
you  are  treated  like  dirt?  Put  some  dirt 
into  the  product."  This  injury  to  ma- 
chinery and  product  constitutes  Sabot- 
age. The  word  comes  from  sabot,  French 
for  shoe,  and  originated  in  a  "pleasant" 
little  custom  of  disgruntled  workmen 
throwing  their  wooden  shoes  into  ma- 
chinery and  wrecking  the  finely  adjusted 
mechanism. 

Socialism  would  substitute  the  State 
for  the  individual  proprietor;  Syndical- 
ism on  the  other  hand  aims  at  a  decen- 
tralizing effect  whereby  the  whole  body 
of  workers  in  various  places,  represent- 
ed on  trade  councils  will  control  the  in- 
dustries that  supply  the  demands  of  so- 
ciety without  the  interference  of  a  cen- 
tral government.  In  this  way  trade  cen- 
tres would  become  communes.  Syndical- 
ism does  not  divide  the  workers  into  sep- 
arate unions.  It  takes  in  all  workers  in- 
discriminately, and  by  making  the  cause 
of  one  the  concern  of  all,  aims  to  have 
the  workers  strike  as  one  man.  The  Syn- 
dicalist thus  regards  himself  as  a  true 
democrat.  The  old  trade  unionist  with 
his  exclusive  trade  organization,  is  look- 
ed upon  as  an  aristocrat. 

The  non-producer  or,  as  the  Syndical- 
ists call  him,  the  parasite  of  society, 
would,  it  is  asserted,  automatically  be- 
come non-existent.  Thus  we  might  see 
the  spectacle  of  a  duke  exchanging  his 


DENNIS  HATHNAUOHT  209 

coronet  for  a  hod  and  the  old  English 
Squire  dropping  the  golf  stick  for  the 
shovel. 

Important  recent  works  are  "Syndical- 
ism and  Labour,"  by  Sir  Arthur  Clay; 
"Syndicalism  and  the  General  Strike,"  by 
Arthur  D.  Lewis;  "American  Syndical- 
ism— the  Industrial  Workers  of  the 
World,"  by  John  Graham  Brooks;  "The 
New  Unionism,"  by  Andre  Tridon. 

Syndicalism  is  such  a  radical  advance 
over  ordinary  Socialism  that  it  may  re- 
sult in  many  conservatives  finally  be- 
coming Socialists  to  fight  this  more  ad- 
vanced and  revolutionary  development 
of  economic  thought. 

But  Socialism  is  far  from  being  the 
Ultima  Thule  of  Government.  Its  great- 
est weakness  is  a  tendency  toward  dog- 
matism. The  revolutionary  Socialist  hates 
the  Fabian  and  the  Communist  and  Syn- 
dicalist hate  the  moderate  Socialist.  The 
form  of  organization,  or  tyranny  of  the 
group  tends  to  minimize  the  object 
sought,  just  as  in  some  religious  bodies, 
the  way  you  worship  seems  to  count  for 
more  than  what  you  worship  and  why 
you  worship.  Just  as  nature  is  governed 
by  the  power  inherent  in  the  atom,  so 
must  all  true  and  lasting  progress  de- 
pend upon  the  improvement  of  the  indi- 
vidual   man — the    race  unit. 

Opponents  of  Socialism  declare  that 
the  weakest  point  in  the  movement  !s 
the  supposed  disinclination  of  man  to 
labovir.  With  growing  intelligence  this 
ancient  prejudice  toward  labour  is  dying 


210  DENNIS  HATHNAUOHT 

out.  Labour  is  assuming  a  dignity  which 
makes  it  a  reproach  to  be  an  idler  and 
last  of  all,  as  Fourier  shows,  labour  may 
be  made  attractive.  If  this  could  be  done, 
John  Stuart  Mill  says,  the  principal  dif- 
ficulty of  Socialism  would  be  overcome. 

Socialism  is  but  a  milestone  in  the 
progress  of  Dennis  Hathnaught.  What  Is 
to  come  after  it  we  know  not,  for  it  is 
not  given  to  man  to  lift  the  veil  of  the 
future.  Keep  up  your  courage  and  trudge 
on.  Your  journey  is  unending.  In  Swe- 
denborg,  Browning,  and  others  of  the 
thinking  tribe,  you  will  find  thoughts 
that  combat  the  idea  of  finality.  Walt 
Whitman,  the  poet  of  Democracy,  a  man 
jocund  with  the  zest  of  living,  held  to 
the  belief  that  "it  is  provided  in  the  es- 
sence of  things  that  from  any  fruition  of 
success,  no  matter  what,  shall  come  forth 
something  to  make  a  greater  struggle 
necessary." 

There  is  no  place  for  the  loafer  in  the 
scheme  of  that  mysterious  thing  we  call 
Life.  The  soul  never  dies  nor  does  per- 
sonal identity  die.  Man  cannot  escape 
his  Destiny  and  suicide  does  not  end  suf- 
fering. What  you  do  Here  counts  for 
you  There.  You  must  face  the  issue  and 
here  or  somewhere,  man  must  do  his 
work.  This  journey  of  ours  had  no  be- 
ginning and  it  will  never  have  an  end. 
We  pass  from  the  nadir  to  the  zenith 
only  to  find  that  what  we  thought  the 
zenith  is  but  the  nadir  of  new  heights. 
Courage,  and  trudge  on — up,  up,  up,  ever 
in  pursuit  of  the  Ultimate  which  beck- 
ens  to  us  but  never  waits. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

DENNIS  INQUIRING  INTO  LAND 

TITLES. 

Rousseau,  borrowing  a  thought  from 
Pascal,  declared  the  first  man  who  en- 
closed a  piece  of  land  the  real  founder 
of  society.  All  through  history  the  great 
struggle  has  been  between  those  that  own 
land  and  those  that  are  landless.  If 
you  possess  nothing  it  is  easy  to  con- 
vince yourself  that  you  should  have  a 
share  of  your  neighbour's  property.  Ana- 
lyze the  arguments  of  many  pseudo  so- 
cialists who  confound  their  covetousness 
with  conviction,  and  you  will  find  tbair 
basis  in  the  fable  of  the  two  Irishmen, 
one  of  whom  possessed  two  goats,  while 
the   other   had   none. 

One  of  the  most  radical  proposals  to 
settle  the  land  question  is  that  put  forth 
by  Henry  George  in  his  "Progress  and 
Poverty" — a  system  which  has  becoma 
widely  known  under  the  familiar  eco- 
nomic name  of  the  "Single  Tax." 
Mr.  George  would  abolish  all  taxes  save 
that  on  land.  By  exempting  improve- 
ments and  taxing  land  to  its  full  value 
he  would  do  away  with  speculation  in 
land,  and  real  estate  brokers  would  not 

211 


212      ^        DENNIS  HATUNAUGHT 

find  it  profitable,  he  contends,  to  hold 
unimproved  land  as  they  do  at  present, 
waiting-  to  take  advantage  of  new  pub- 
lic works  or  the  enterprise  of  contiguous 
landowners,  to  enhance,  without  ex- 
pense to  themselves,  the  value  of  land 
held  for  speculation. 

Under  the  present  system,  if  an  apart- 
ment house  faces  desii-able  property — 
say  the  home  of  a  wealthy  man  with 
Its  park  and  gardens — the  Hathnaughts 
in  the  apartments  are  Jikely,  according 
to  single  taxers,  to  pay  a  far  higher  ren- 
tal than  if  the  outlook  were  upon  a  fac- 
tory. 

The  difference  between  the  rent  Hath- 
naught  pays  and  what  he  would  be 
charged  were  there  a  factory  fronting 
him  instead  of  the  well-kept  home  of  the 
millionaire,  constitutes,  in  the  view  of 
single  taxers,  an  unearned  increment. 

In  a  humorous  way  the  following  story 
from  Harper's  Magazine  illustrates  the 
manner  in  which  the  "unearned  incre- 
ment" opei'ates  and  is  sometimes  circum- 
vented: 

An  old  coloured  woman  came  into  a 
Washington  real-estate  office  the  other 
day  and  was  recognized  as  a  tenant  of 
a  small  house  that  had  become  much 
enhanced  in  value  by  reason  of  a  new 
union  station  in  that  neighbourhood. 

"Look  here,  auntie,  we  are  going  to 
raise  your  rent  this  month,"  the  agent 
remarked   briskly. 

"  'Deed,  an'  ah's  glad  to  hear  dat,  sah," 
the  old  woman  replied,  ducking  her  head 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  213 

politely.  "Mighty  glad,  fo'  sho',  case  ah 
des  come  in  hyah  terday  ter  tell  yo'  all 
dat  ah  couldn't  raise  hit  dis  month." 

In  a  certain  measure  Mr.  George's  sys- 
tem has  been  introduced  into  that  great 
.experiment  station  of  civilization  and 
laboratory  of  economics — New  Zealand, 
where  it  is  no  longer  possible  to  alienate 
land.  Lloyd  George  and  his  followers, 
In  a  modified  form,  are  applying  the  prin- 
ciple to  the  land  question  in  England. 

The  physiocrats,  a  group  of  French 
economists  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
held  views  that  were  in  many  particulars 
like  those  of  Mr.  George,  especially  in 
regard  to  what  they  called  the  "Impot 
Unique,"  which  resembled  the  single  tax. 
It  was  the  contention  of  the  physiocrats 
that  land  was  the  only  source  of  wealth. 
A  surplus  was  produced  through  culti- 
vation and  nature's  free  and  generous 
help,  and  this  surplus,  the  excess  of  the 
value  of  the  product  over  its  cost,  the 
physiocrats  called  the  "Produit  Net."  As 
land  is  the  great  source  of  wealth  there 
is  naturally  competition  for  its  use,  and 
this  brings  the  prospective  tenant  into 
negotiations  with  the  landlord.  In  this 
way  the  tenant  is  forced  to  hand  over 
to  the  landlord  the  greater  part  of  the 
"Produit  Net"  under  the  name  of  rent. 

Frangois  Quesnay  (1694-1774),  one  of 
the  leading  physiocrats,  noted  three  class- 
es— the  farmer  whose  first  hand  devo- 
tion to  agriculture  produced  the  "Produit 
Net";  the  landlord  who  waited  until  the 
harvest  was  gai'nered  and  then,   without 


214  DENNIS  H AT HN AUGHT 

the  turn  of  a  hair,  collected  most  of  the 
"Produit  Net"  in  the  name  of  rent;  last- 
ly, the  manufacturers  and  their  like — 
the  so-called  "Sterile  Class" — who  even- 
tually got  what  was  left. 

Quesnay,  developing  his  argument  from 
the  conditions,  which  he  held  to  be  self- 
evident  facts,  contended  that  a  tax  on 
land,  the  "impot  unique,"  was  the  only 
legitimate  form  of  taxation.  It  was  Ques- 
nay who  invented  the  term  "Political 
Economy,"  but  later  thinkers  do  not 
agree  with  his  characterization  of  manu- 
facturers as  a  "Sterile  Class,"  because 
they  do  not  produce  wealth,  but  simply 
alter  its  shape.  The  manufacturer  adds 
utility  to  a  thing  which  had  not  previous- 
ly possessed  this  attribute,  and  thus  they 
add  to  human  happiness  by  meeting  hu- 
man wants — a  work  that  can  hardly  be 
called    sterile. 

Adam  Smith,  author  of  "The  Wealth 
of  Nations,"  the  real  founder  of  the  sci- 
ence of  Political  Economy,  pays  a  high 
tribute  to  the  worth  and  value  of  the 
labours  of  the  physiocrats.  Some  ap- 
proximation also  to  their  theories  and 
the  theories  of  Mr.  George  will  be  found 
In  Herbert  Spencer's  "Social  Statics,"  In 
which  it  Is  held  that  "equity  does  not 
permit  property  in  land."  "Supposing," 
he  argues,  "the  entire  habitable  globe  to 
be  so  enclosed,  it  follows  that  if  the 
landowners  have  a  valid  right  to  its  sur- 
face, all  who  are  not  landowners  have 
no  right  at  all  to  its  surface.  Hence, 
such  can  exist  on  the  earth  by  sufferance 


DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT  215 

only.  They  are  all  trespassers.  Save  by 
the  permission  of  the  lords  of  the  soil, 
they  can  have  no  room  for  the  soles  of 
their  feet.  Nay,  should  the  others  think 
fit  to  deny  them  a  resting  place,  these 
landless  men  might  equitably  be  expelled 
from  the  earth  altogether." 

Spencer,  although  he  changed  his  views 
in  later  life,  very  clearly  foreshadows 
the  principle  of  land  nationalization  which 
Mr.  George  advances  in  "Progress  and 
Poverty"  and  other  economic  works. 

Since  the  fall  of  the  feudal  system  the 
leasing  of  land  to  tenants  has  taken  va- 
rious forms.  The  usual  way  is  a  direct 
rental,  but  in  Italy  and  some  other  coun- 
tries we  find  the  Metayer  system,  where- 
by the  landowner  takes  his  pay  in  a 
portion  of  the  produce.  In  the  United 
States  this  is  called  "taking  a  farm  on 
shares."  It  is  fully  described  by  Faw- 
cett  and  other  political  economists.  In 
Ulster,  in  the  North  of  Ireland,  there  has 
long  been  a  check  on  the  avarice  of  land- 
lords, called  the  "tenant  right,"  where- 
by the  Hathnaught  may  get  some  return 
for  his  enterprise  and  may  realize  on 
his   good   will. 

In  developing  his  land  theory  in  "Prog- 
ress and  Poverty,"  Henry  George  com- 
bats the  principles  set  forth  by  Malthus 
in  his  "Essay  on  Population."  This  work 
appeared  in  1798  and  has  been  the  sub- 
ject of  world-wide  controversy.  Briefly 
Malthus,  who  foreshadowed  the  law  of 
natural  selection,  held  that  the  human 
race  possesses  the  possibility  of  increas- 


216  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

ing  faster  than  the  supply  of  subsistence; 
that  while  population  might  double  in 
a  quarter  of  a  century,  it  was  unlikely 
that  the  means  of  subsistence  would  do 
so. 

The  Malthusian  Jaws  are  three  in  num- 
ber: 

First — Population  is  limited  by  means 
of  subsistence. 

Second — Population  increases  when  the 
means  of  subsistence  increase  unless  in- 
terrupted  by   checks. 

Third — These  checks  which  hold  popu- 
lation down  to  the  level  of  subsistence 
are  vice,  misery  and  moral  restraint. 

Darwin  also  takes  note  of  the  Mal- 
thusian propositions  and  shows  the  effect 
of  natural  selection  and  the-  law  of  the 
survival  of  the  fittest  in  modifying  the 
laws  of  Malthus.  Few  persons  are  now 
alarmed  by  these  propositions  which 
grew  out  of  wrongs  and  conditions  that 
obtained  in  the  days  of  Malthus,  but 
which  are  now  happily  being  corrected  by 
freer  trade  and  other  intelligent  legisla- 
tion and  a  more  enlightened  view  on  the 
part  of  the  population  as  to  man's  place 
In   nature. 

Men  and  women  are  not  so  prone  nowa- 
days to  bring  into  the  world  children 
damned  from  birth  to  lives  of  degrada- 
tion and  misery.  "Moral  restraint"  Is 
developing  into  the  new  science  of  eu- 
genics or  race  selection. 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

DENNIS  BECOMES  A  LITERARY 

HERO. 

While  we  find  incidental  references  to 
labour  in  ancient  books,  it  is  only  with- 
in the  last  century  that  Dennis  Hath- 
naught  has  been  considered  of  sufficient 
importance  to  have  books  written  about 
him  as  the  main  theme.  Macaulay  makes 
a  kind  of  apology  in  his  "History  of  Eng- 
land" for  his  slight  attention  to  the  com- 
mon people,  and  sets  down  as  the  cause 
the  scantiness  of  the  materials  of  their 
history. 

"Literature  during  many  ages,"  says 
Buckle  (History  of  Givilizataon),  "In- 
stead of  benefiting  society,  injured  it  by 
increasing  credulity,  and  thus  stopping 
the  progress  of  knowledge.  Indeed,  the 
aptitude  for  falsehood  became  so  great 
that  there  was  nothing  men  were  un- 
willing to  believe.  Nothing  came  amiss 
to  their  greedy  and  credulous  ears.  His- 
tories of  omens,  prodigies,  apparitions, 
strange  portents,  monstrous  appearances 
in  the  heavens,  the  wildest  and  most  in- 
coherent absurdities,  were  repeated  from 
mouth  to  mouth,  and  copied  from  book 
to  book,  with  as  much  care  as  if  they 

217 


218  DENNIS  HATHNAUOHT 

were  the  choicest  treasures  of  human 
wisdom. 

"Instead  of  telling  us  those  things 
which  alone  have  any  value,  instead  of 
^ving  us  information  respecting  the 
progress  of  knowledge,  and  the  way  In 
which  mankind  has  been  affected  by  the 
diffusion  of  that  knowledge,  instead  of 
these  things,  the  vast  majority  of  his- 
torians fill  their  works  with  the  most 
trifling  and  miserable  details:  personal 
anecdotes  of  kings  and  courts;  intermin- 
able relations  of  what  was  said  by  one 
minister,  and  what  was  thought  by  an- 
other, and,  what  is  worse  than  all,  long 
accounts  of  campaigns,  battles,  sieges, 
very  interesting  to  those  engaged  in 
them,  but  to  us  utterly  useless,  because 
they  neither  furnish  new  truths,  nor  do 
they  supply  the  means  by  which  new 
truths  may  be  discovered. 

"This  is  the  real  impediment  which 
now  stops  our  advance.  It  is  this  want 
of  judgment,  and  this  ignorance  of  what 
Is  most  worthy  of  selection,  which  de- 
prives us  of  materials  that  ought  long 
since  to  have  been  accumulated,  arranged, 
and  stored  up  for  future  use.  In  other 
great  branches  of  knowledge,  observation 
has  preceded  discovery;  first  the  facts 
have  been  registered,  and  then  their  laws 
have  been  found.  But  in  the  study  of  the 
history  of  man,  the  important  facts 
have  been  neglected,  and  the  unimportant 
ones  preserved." 

All  this  is  changing.     Green   wrote  a 


DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT  219 

history  of  the  English  people  rather  than 
a  history  of  England.  In  America  J. 
B.  McMaster  has  done  a  like  service 
for  the  "People  of  the  United  States." 
Prom  the  press  there  is  pouring  out  dally 
books  innumerable  touching  upon  labour 
and  the  social  revolution.  The  writers 
sometimes  use  the  poetical  form,  then 
again  fiction,  history,  or  the  form  of 
special  treatise.  The  movement  has  In- 
vaded the  stage,  and  some  notable  plays 
have  been  produced  within  the  last  few 
years,  which  touch  upon  the  life  and 
struggles   of   the   Hathnaughts. 

Publishers'  statements — particularly  a 
striking  one  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  by 
a  member  of  the  Macmillan  firm — show 
that  there  is  a  lessening  demand  for  old 
books,  and  a  marvellous  increase  In  the 
public  taste  for  new  fiction.  But  It  Is  a 
cheering  note  of  the  times  to  hear  that 
on  the  other  hand  there  is  a  great  and 
growing  public  that  calls  for  solid  books 
on  economic  questions  and  even  the  most 
conservative  of  the  publishers  are  now 
supplying  these,  many  of  them  revolu- 
tionary in  their  character. 

The  first  mighty  blow  struck  at  foolish 
literature  was  that  of  Cervantes  in  "Don 
Quixote,"  which  laughed  the  absurdities 
of  the  Age  of  Chivalry  out  of  existence. 
Lord  Morley  of  Blackburn  (John  Mor- 
ley),  in  a  study  of  "Diderot  and  the  En- 
cyclopaedists," points  out  the  power 
wielded  by  these  precursors  of  the  French 
Revolution,  by  combining  with  the  scien- 
tific idea  the  social  idea.    Old  intellectual 


220  DENNIS  HATHNAUGTIT 

insurgents  like  Abelard,  Bruno,  and  Va- 
nini,  he  says,  had  felt  the  iron  hand  of 
the  church  because,  with  all  their  phi- 
losophy and  science,  they  lacked  the  social 
idea.  The  Encyclopaedists,  combining-  the 
scientific  with  the  social  idea,  met  the 
Church  on  new  ground  and  with  a  new 
weapon. 

"Its  leaders,"  Morley  says,  "surveyed 
the  entire  field  with  as  much  accuracy, 
and  with  as  wide  a  range  as  their  in- 
struments allowed;  and  they  scattered 
over  the  world  a  set  of  ideas  which  at 
once  entered  into  energetic  rivalry  with 
the  ancient  scheme  of  authority.  The 
great  symbol  of  this  new  comprehensive- 
ness in  the  insurrection  was  the  En- 
cyclopaedia. .  .  .  Broadly  stated,  the 
great  moral  of  it  all  was  this:  that 
human  nature  is  good,  that  the  world  is 
capable  of  being  made  a  desirable  abid- 
ing place,  and  that  the  evil  of  the  world 
is  the  fruit  of  bad  education  and  bad  in- 
stitutions. This  cheerful  doctrine  now 
strikes  on  the  ear  as  a  commonplace 
and  a  truism.  A  hundred  years  ago  in 
France  it  was  a  wonderful  gospel,  and 
the  beginning  of  a  now  dispensation. 
Every  social  improvement  since 
has  been  the  outcome  of  that  doctrine  in 
one  form  or  another." 

No  summary  of  facts  bearing  upon  the 
house  of  Hathnaught  would  be  complete 
without  reference  to  the  important  part 
played  by  the  "Encyclopedic."  Breath- 
ing as  it  did  the  broadest  humanity  and 
sympathy    with    the    Hathnaughts    and 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  221 

human  progress;  subordinating  the 
church  to  science  and  the  service  of 
man,  it  appeared  at  a  time  when  the 
people  were  ripe  for  revolution.  The  old 
order  was  changing,  and  the  "Encyclo- 
pedle"  hurried  the  process  of  the  change. 
It  was  projected  by  men  who  were  im- 
patient of  all  restraint  upon  liberty,  and 
its  thirty-five  volumes  were  completed 
between  the  years  1751  and  1780.  With- 
in twenty-five  years  the  spark  thus  ig- 
nited burst  into  the  conflagration  known 
as  the  French  Revolution. 

We  see  the  mob  element  in  Katherine 
Pearson  Woods  novel,  "Metzerott,  Shoe- 
maker." This  is  a  modern  study  of  so- 
cialism with  an  American  setting  in  an 
industrial  center  called  "Micklegard." 
Karl  Metzerott,  the  hero,  will  not  stick 
to  his  last,  but  concerns  himself  with 
the  social  revolution  as  he  sees  it  in  his 
community.  Free  thinker  in  religion  and 
socialist  in  political  bent,  he  dreams  of 
a  day  when  America  will  be  a  vast  co- 
operative commonwealth.  With  some 
others  he  establishes  a  co-operative  busi- 
ness which  meets  with  success.  But 
there  are  warnings  of  an  explosion  in 
the  discontent  of  the  Hathnaughts,  and 
when  the  breaking  of  a  dam  at  the  pri- 
vate fish  pond  of  the  ruling  caste  brings 
on  a  flood,  there  is  only  needed  the  death 
of  a  poor  victim  to  bring  out  the  mob 
spirit.  Metzerott  leads  the  Hathnaughts 
that  are  bearing  down  upon  the  home 
of  Randolph,  the  town's  wealthiest  citi- 
zen, to  wreak  vengeance,  when  a  bullet 


222     DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT 

ends  the  life  of  the  shoemaker's  son 
Louis,  and  the  mob  is  turned  into  mourn- 
ers about  the  grief-crazed  father. 

Class  jealousy,  which  makes  the  Hath- 
naughts  suspicious  of  any  of  their  num- 
ber seen  fraternizing  with  the  caste  above 
them,  is  shown  in  "Ihe  Mutable  Many," 
by  Robert  Barr  (1896).  The  scene  is 
London,  and  the  theme  the  social  revo- 
lution. During  a  strike,  Sartwell,  man- 
ager of  the  factory  affected,  will  not 
deal  with  the  strikers  as  a  body,  but  he 
does  meet  Marsten,  one  of  the  men,  and 
as  individuals  they  review  the  clashing 
issues. 

Marsten,  although  he  loves  Edna  Sart- 
well, the  manager's  daughter,  is  loyal 
to  his  class,  and  the  fight  continues,  with 
the  result  that  the  strike  is  lost,  and 
Marsten  finds  himself  dismissed  as  work- 
man and  lover.  He  is  made  secretary  of 
the  union,  and  tries  to  win  Miss  Sart- 
well, although  he  has  a  rival  for  her 
hand  in  Barney  Hope,  son  of  one  of  the 
mill  owners.     She  refuses  them  both. 

There  is  a  second  strike  at  the  works 
and  Marsten  has  this  so  well  under  way 
that  success  is  in  sight,  when  Edna  Sart- 
well calls  at  the  union  headquarters  to 
plead  with  Marsten  to  let  her  father  win 
and  thus  retain  his  ascendency  at  the 
works,  offering  him  her  hand  as  a  re- 
ward. He  will  not  listen  to  what  he 
considers  a  dishonourable  proposal,  but 
the  interview  has  sealed  his  fate,  for  the 
Hathnaughts  jump  to  the  conclusion  that 
he  is  betraying  them.     He  is  so  severely 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  223 

treated  in  consequence  that  he  has  to 
■underg-o  attention  at  a  hospital.  Sart- 
■well  easily  defeats  Marsten's  successor 
and  what  might  have  been  a  winning 
fight  under  the  old  secretary  becomes 
rout  under  the  new.  But  Marsten  in  the 
end  wins  the  girl. 

Some  years  ago  "The  Breadwinners," 
a  powerful  study  of  the  labour  question, 
attracted  wide  attention,  and  there  was 
much  speculation  concerning  the  iden- 
tity of  the  author.  A  member  of  the 
old  firm  of  Harper's  which  published  the 
book,  not  long  ago  revealed  the  author 
in  the  person  of  the  late  John  Hay.  In 
his  lifetime  Mr.  Hay  never  acknowledged 
It,  despite  its  wide  circulation  and  fre- 
quent intimations  that  the  novel  was 
from  his  pen. 

In  "The  Breadwinners"  is  depicted  the 
worst  side  of  the  labour  question — the 
rascally,  demagogic  leader  and  the  easily 
inflamed  mob.  Maud  Matchin,  daughter 
of  a  Western  carpenter  in  business  for 
himself,  is  loved  by  one  of  her  father's 
workmen,  Sam  Sleeny,  but  she  has  taken 
a  violent  fancy  to  Alfred  Farnham,  for- 
merly an  army  oflBcer,  and  tells  him  so. 

Maud  is  fair  to  look  upon,  but  en- 
vironment and  lack  of  culture  have  put 
the  vulgar  taint  upon  her,  and,  of  course, 
she  does  not  appeal  to  Farnham,  who  has 
brought  about  the  situation  by  showing 
an  interest  in  the  girl.  Farnham  really 
loves  the  beautiful  Alice  Belding. 

As  the  story  develops,  Farnham  or- 
ganizes a  volunteer  band  to  protect  prop- 


224  DENNIS  HATHNAUOHT 

erty  during  a  great  strike  which  brealis 
out,  and  in  an  attaclc  upon  his  home  by 
the  rioters,  Sleeny  hits  him  with  a  ham- 
mer. Poor  Sleeny  If  left  to  himself 
would  not  be  a  bad  sort  of  fellow,  but 
he  is  under  the  influence  of  Offitt,  an  un- 
scrupulous and  dishonest  labour  leader, 
and  had  grown  jealous  of  Farnham, 
whom   he   mistakes   for   a  rival. 

Maud  feels  that  Farnham  should  be 
punished  for  his  treatment  of  her,  and 
Offitt,  with  a  view  to  winning  her  for 
himself,  gets  a  hammer  from  Sleeny,  and 
entering  Farnham's  house,  assaults  and 
robs  him.  Sleeny  is  arrested  for  the 
crime  after  Offitt  has  cast  suspicion  upon 
him.  Offitt  tries  to  induce  Maud  to  fly 
with  him,  but  she  will  have  none  of  him, 
and  learning  the  truth  from  his  admis- 
sions, she  makes  it  known.  Sleeny  would 
have  been  cleared  of  the  charge,  but  be- 
fore his  innocence  is  established  he  breaks 
jail,  and  meeting  Offitt  at  Maud's  house, 
kills  him.  Tried  for  this  murder,  he  is 
acquitted,  as  it  is  held  he  must  have  been 
insane  at  the  time. 

Alice  Belding  and  her  mother  nursed 
Farnham  after  Offitt's  murderous  attack 
on  him,  and  Alice,  who  had  previously 
refused  him,  finds  that  in  reality  she 
cares  for  him   a  great  deal. 

In  noticing  books  deahng  with  the 
Hathnaughts  we  should  not  overlook 
those  powerful  stories  in  the  "Epic  of 
the  Wheat,"  P"'rank  Norris's  "The  Octo- 
pus" and  "The  Pit."  The  first  deals  with 
wheat  In   the  growing;    "The  Pit"  deals 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  225 

with  the  Chicago  wheat  pit.  A  third  novel 
to  complete  a  trilogy  was  to  have  been 
called  "The  Wolf,"  and  was  to  have  dealt 
with  a  famine  in  Europe,  but  this  was 
not  completed  when  the  author  died. 
Norris  portrays  with  startling  vividness 
the  manner  in  which  railroads  and  cor- 
porations rob  the  farmer  and  control 
legislation. 

A  notable  recent  novel,  "The  Inside  of 
the  Cup,"  by  Winston  Churchill,  is  a 
worth-while  study  of  social  conditions, 
especially  of  the  use  some  unscrupulous 
wealthy  men  make  of  the  church  as  a 
cloak  for  their  hypocrisy. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

HATHNAUGHT  VERSUS  HAYE-AND- 
HOLD. 

Romance  and  tales  of  chivalry  have 
thrown  a  glamour  about  the  old  nobility, 
yet  in  the  main  the  Lords  of  Have-and- 
Hold  were  barbarous,  illiterate  and  un- 
couth. Their  principal  occupations  were 
rioting,  war,  wholesale  robbery,  oppres- 
sion of  the  Hathnaughts,  feastings,  and 
tournaments.  They  seldom  bathed  and 
their  table  manners  were  often  worse 
than  those  of  a  'longshoreman.  Charle- 
magne with  all  his  authority  failed  when 
he  tried  to  introduce  schools,  and  for 
ages,  all  over  Europe,  learning  was  con- 
sidered unworthy  of  the  warrior  caste 
and  was  contemptuously  referred  to  as 
the  province  of  clerks  and  clerics.  In- 
deed, it  was  the  illiteracy  of  the  nobility 
that  gave  the  church  such  an  enormous 
ascendency  over  the  feudal  lords  of  the 
Middle  Ages. 

This  illiteracy  and  the  consequences 
growing  out  of  it  is  strikingly  illustrated 
by  Bulwer  Lytton  in  "The  Last  of  the 
Barons"  in  describing  the  struggle  of 
Adam  Warner,  whose  experiments  with 
steam  and  the  invention  of  an  engine,  led 

226 


DENNIS  H AT HN AUGHT  227 

to  suspicions  that  perhaps  the  Devil  had 
a  hand  in  it — a  deduction  that  seemed 
almost  confirmed  when  the  engine  blew 
up  because  it  lacked  a  safety  valve. 

Tytler  (History  of  Scotland)  is  author- 
ity for  the  statement  that  from  the  ac- 
cession of  Alexander  III  to  the  death  of 
David  (1370)  it  would  be  impossible  to 
instance  a  single  case  of  a  Scottish  baron 
possessing  the  power  to  sign  his  name. 
There  is  authority  for  the  belief  that 
this  condition  obtained  in  many  cases, 
even  as  late  as  the  closing  half  of  the 
sixteenth  century. 

Arthur  Young,  whose  valuable  obser- 
vations on  Prance  and  French  life  and 
institutions  have  been  made  use  of  in 
the  chapter  dealing  with  the  French  Rev- 
olution, found  such  an  amazing  degree  of 
ignorance  in  eighteenth  century  France 
that  he  easily  persuaded  a  Frenchman 
that  England  possessed  neither  trees  nor 
rivers. 

Trade,  industry,  the  useful  arts,  and  the 
well-ordered  life  were  despised  in  "the 
good  old  days,"  and  war,  outrage,  pillage, 
and  gross  intemperance  in  eating  and 
drinking  were  regarded  as  the  only  fit 
occupations  of  a  gentleman.  Indeed,  al- 
though manners  have  softened,  labour  and 
trade  are  still  held  in  contempt,  and  when 
a  member  of  the  nobility  actually  does  go 
to  work.  It  causes  a  ripple  of  excitement 
and  long  cabled  accounts  of  the  phenome- 
non to  the  foreign  press  give  the  incident 
international  note. 

As  late  as  the  eighteenth  century  (see 


228  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

Hazlitt's  "Old  Cookery  Books")  the  cus- 
tom of  using  the  fork  at  table — started 
In  Italy  in  the  fourteenth  century — was 
still  a  novelty  in  England,  and  gentlemen 
travelling  in  Great  Britain  (see  Inter- 
national Encyclopedia)  who  had  acquired 
the  habit  on  the  Continent  always  car- 
ried a  fork  in  a  case,  for  the  inns  did 
not  supply  them.  Hazlitt  also  inclines  to 
give  credence  to  the  report  that  when 
Queen  Elizabeth  was  told  of  the  defeat 
of  the  Armada  she  was  keeping  "secret 
house"  and  enjoying  an  unconventional 
session  with  a  roast  goose.  Keeping  "se- 
cret house"  was  the  way  they  charac- 
terized in  those  days  a  return  to  the  rude 
manners  of  the  "good  old  times"  before 
table  etiquette  began  to  make  inroads 
in  England.  If  Mrs.  Trollope  had  been 
more  mindful  of  her  own  people's  recent 
emergence  from  barbarism,  she  might 
have  been  kinder  to  the  Yankees  of  tho 
early  nineteenth  century  whose  habits  she 
criticised  so  frankly  in  "Domestic  Man- 
ners of  the  Americans." 

It  is  not  so  many  generations  ago  that 
ancestors  of  some  of  our  "best"  Ameri- 
can families  used  to  rush  in  at  the  din- 
ner hour  with  coat  off  and  suspenders 
down  and  tackle  their  tripe  and  corn 
cakes  with  all  the  wild  abandon  of  primi- 
tive man. 

Mediaeval  Lords  of  Have-and-Hold 
sometimes  combined  patronage  of  the 
Arts  with  tho  greatest  cruelties  of  un- 
restrained despotism.  Selwyn  Brinton. 
author  of   "Renaissance  In   Italian  Art," 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  229 

declares  that  when  the  Communes  and 
Republics  of  Italy  began  to  get  exhaust- 
ed and  finally  to  disappear,  there  sprang 
up  in  their  place  everywhere,  the  great 
princely  houses,  the  Medici  of  Florence, 
the  Visconti  and  the  Sforza  at  Milan,  the 
Este  at  Ferrara,  the  Bentivogli  at  Bo- 
logna, the  Montefeltri  at  Urbino,  the 
Baglioni  at  Perugia,  the  Malatesta  at  Ri- 
mini, and  Cesena  and  the  Gonzaghi  at 
Mantua — all  living  in  castles,  lording  it 
over  the  adjacent  territory,  and  forever 
in  the  shadow  of  death  from  poison  or 
murder, 

"In  the  strange  and  frightful  isolation 
in  which  the  Italian  despot  often  lived," 
says  Brinton,  "ever  plotting  himself  to 
keep  his  insecure  throne,  ever  watchlnj? 
against  plots  within  the  city  and  without, 
this  brilliant  society  of  dependents  (schol- 
ars, poets,  painters)  became  his  solace 
and  his  highest  pleasure.  Traverse  that 
wonderful  palace  of  the  house  of  Este — 
intact,  surrounded  by  its  moat,  dominat- 
ing with  its  insolent  pride  the  old  city 
of  Ferrara.  Into  the  upper  galleries  and 
banquet  halls  the  sunlight  pours.  We 
seem  to  hear  the  musical  laughter,  the 
rustle  of  the  rich  old  cinque-cento  cos- 
tumes; the  walls  are  hung  with  paintings 
by  Dosso  Dossi  or  Titian — naked  wres- 
tlers, figures  running,  and  the  radiant 
deities  of  the  old  re-awakened  mythology. 

"And  below,  beneath  even  the  moat,  lies 
the  other  side  of  the  picture:  the  hor- 
rible dungeons,  dark,  noisome,  shadowy, 
where  the  political  conspirator,  the  incon- 


230  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

venient  relative,  the  too  outspoken  citi- 
zen, the  suspected  wife,  were  thrust,  and 
— soon  forgotten." 

In  the  "Life  and  Letters  of  Elizabeth, 
Last  Duchess  of  Gordon,"  by  the  Rev.  A. 
Moody  Stuart,  will  be  found  the  following 
incident  abridged  from  Sir  Walter  Scott: 
"Two  hundred  years  ago,  Gordon  Castle, 
then  called  the  Bog  of  Gicht,  presented  a 
very  different  scene.  The  Parquharsons 
of  Deeside  having  slain  a  Gordon  of  note, 
the  Marquis  of  Huntly,  along  with  the 
Laird  of  Grant,  prepared  to  take  a  bloody 
vengeance  for  his  death.  That  none  of 
the  guilty  tribe  might  escape,  Grant  oc- 
cupied the  upper  end  of  the  vale  of  Dee 
with  his  clan  while  the  Gordons  ascend- 
ed the  river  from  beneath,  each  party 
killing,  burning,  and  destroying  without 
mercy  all  they  found  before  them.  The 
men  and  women  of  the  race  were  nearly 
all  slain;  and  when  the  day  was  done, 
Huntly  found  himself  encumbered  with 
about  two  hundred  orphan  children. 

"About  a  year  after  the  foray,  the 
Laird  of  Grant  chanced  to  dine  at  the 
Marquis's  castle,  and  was  of  course  en- 
tertained with  magnificence.  After  din- 
ner Huntly  conducted  Grant  to  a  balcony 
which  overlooked  the  kitchen,  where  he 
saw  the  remains  of  the  abundant  feast  of 
the  numerous  household  flung  at  random 
into  a  large  trough.  The  master  cook 
gave  a  signal  with  his  silver  whistle,  on 
which  a  hatch  like  that  of  a  dog  kennel 
was  raised,  and  there  rushed  into  the 
kitchen,    shrieking,    shouting,    yelling,    a 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  231 

huge  mob  of  children,  half-naked  and  to- 
tally wild,  who  threw  themselves  on  the 
contents  of  the  trough,  and  fought,  strug- 
gled, and  clamored  for  the  largest  share. 

"Grant  was  a  man  of  humanity,  and 
asked,  'In  the  name  of  Heaven,  who  are 
these?'  'They  are  the  children  of  those 
Farquharsons  whom  we  slew  last  year 
on  Deeside,'  answered  Huntly. 

"The  Laird  felt  more  shocked  than  it 
would  have  been  prudent  or  polite  to  ex- 
press. 'My  Lord,'  he  said,  'my  sword 
helped  to  make  these  poor  children  or- 
phans, and  it  is  not  fair  that  your  lord- 
ship should  be  burdened  with  all  the  ex- 
pense of  maintaining  them.  You  have 
supported  them  for  a  year  and  a  day,  al- 
low me  now  to  take  them  to  Castle  Grant, 
and  keep  them  for  the  same  time  at  my 
cost.' 

"Such  was  the  savage  sport  of  the 
lord  of  Gordon  Castle  two  hundred  years 
ago;  and  when  his  lady  looked  over  that 
balcony,  it  was  only  to  enjoy  the  spec- 
tacle, and  not  to  rescue  any  of  the 
wretched  children  from  their  revolting 
degradation." 

Like  father,  like  son ;  children  of  Lords 
of  Have-and-Hold  were  equally  unmind- 
ful of  the  feelings  of  the  common  people. 
In  Eugene  Sue's  "The  Iron  Trevet,"  one 
of  "The  Mysteries  of  the  People"  series, 
he  tells  of  a  seignior's  son  who  lamented 
that  he  had  never  seen  a  serf  drowned. 
In  the  Clancarty  there  is  handed  down 
a  tradition  that  a  daughter  of  a  Mac- 
Carthy  More  wept  because  she  had  never 


232  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

seen  a  peasant  hanged.  To  please  her, 
her  father  ordered  a  man  brought  in  from 
the  fields  and  his  daughter's  wish  was 
soon  satisfied. 

The  people  as  the  demagogues  love  to 
call  the  mass  of  the  Hathnaughts  are 
easily  gulled  even  in  our  day,  and  they 
permitted  this  injustic*  to  go  on  in  ex- 
change for  sops  occasionally  thrown  to 
them. 

Etienne  De  La  Boetie  (1530-1563)  in  a 
work  called  "Discourse  on  Voluntary 
Slavery,"  but  also  known  as  "Contre- 
Un"  (Against  One),  which  Warner's  Li- 
brary of  the  World's  Best  Literature  de- 
scribes as  a  rather  flat  attack  on  mon- 
archy, but  which  nevertheless  is  filled 
with  sound  and  shrewd  observation,  pays 
his  respects  to  "the  people."  In  common 
with  many  historians,  De  La  Boetie  notes 
how  easily  the  people  are  made  to  forget 
their  liberties  and  the  outrages  against 
them  when  they  are  lured  by  theatrical 
performances,  games,  spectacles,  gladia- 
torial combats,  and  the  exhibiting  of 
strange  beasts,  as  was  the  usual  method 
among  Roman  tyrants  to  make  the  pop\a- 
lace  willing  instruments  of  oppression. 
The  tyrants  used  even  to  feast  the  Ro- 
man mob,  and  this  appeal  to  appetite  was 
so  effective,  says  Boetie,  that  the  "clever- 
est of  them  all  would  not  have  dropped 
his  bowl  of  soup  to  recover  the  liberty  of 
the  Republic  of  Plato." 

That  feudal  system  of  government  in 
New  York  city  known  as  Tammany  Hall 
).s  founded  on  the  same  principle.     Every 


DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT  233 

year  the  district  leaders  give  outings,  and 
the  allegiance  of  the  enfranchised  fools 
of  the  city  is  purchased  for  a  plate  of 
chowder. 

Heinrich  Heine  (1799-1856),  a  very 
good  friend  of  human  liberty,  likewise 
had  contempt  for  the  loafer  proletariat. 
"Your  poor  Monarch""  (the  people),  he 
says,  "is  not  lovely;  on  the  contrary,  he 
is  very  ugly.  But  his  ugliness  is  the  re- 
sult of  dirt,  and  will  vanish  as  soon  as 
we  erect  public  bathhouses  where  his 
Majesty,  the  People,  can  bathe  gratis.  A 
bit  of  soap  will  not  prove  amiss,  and  we 
shall  then  behold  a  smart  looking  People, 
a  People  indeed  of  the  first  water.  .  .  . 
As  soon  as  his  High  Mightiness  has  been 
properly  fed,  and  has  sated  his  appetite, 
he  will  smile  on  us  with  gracious  conde- 
scension, just  as  the  other  monarchs  do. 
.  .  .  He  bestows  his  affection  and  his 
confidence  on  those  who  shout  the  jargon 
of  his  own  passions;  while  he  reserves 
his  hatred  for  the  brave  man  who  en- 
deavours to  reason  and  exalt  him.  .  .  . 
Give  the  People  the  choice  between  the 
most  righteous  of  the  righteous  and  the 
most  wretched  highway  robber,  and  rest 
assured  its  cry  will  be,  'Give  us  Barab- 
bas.     Long  live  Barabbas!' 

"The  secret  of  this  perversion  is  igno- 
rance. This  national  evil  we  must  en- 
deavour to  allay  by  means  of  public 
schools,  where  education,  together  with 
bread  and  butter  and  such  other  food  as 
may  be  required,  will  be  supplied  free  of 
expense." 


234  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 

Therein  lies  the  whole  secret  of  true 
progress  —  Education.  Man's  greatest 
crime,  often  committed  in  the  name  of 
the  Most  High,  has  been  the  degradation 
of  God's  image.  Slavery,  serfdom,  the 
Indian  Caste  system,  all  handmaids  of 
Ignorance,  have  been  designed  to  hold 
man  down  to  the  brute  level,  but  Educa- 
tion, the  training  and  disciplining  of  his 
thinking  powers,  will  put  him  in  touch 
with  the  Infinite. 

Knowledge  of  hygiene  and  sanitation 
will  yet  banish  the  slums  and  the  White 
Plague,  and  Domestic  Science  with  its 
flreless  cookers,  vacuum  cleaners,  dish 
and  clothes  washing  machines  is  already 
emancipating  woman   from   drudgery. 

A  growing  impatience  with  the  jack- 
assery  of  armaments  is  bringing  about 
a  marked  decline  in  the  war  spirit,  and 
the  softening  of  human  passions  has 
banished  torture  from  judicial  inquiries 
and  is  bringing  about  prison  reform  and 
a  loud  call  for  the  abolition  of  capital 
punishment  which  is  always  swift  for  the 
poor  and  slow  to  reach  the  powerful. 
Race  and  religious  prejudices  are  dying 
out,  and  snobbery  is  coming  to  be  regard- 
ed as  a  fair  target  for  ridicule.  There  is 
graft  In  high  places,  but  all  this  will  be 
corrected  by  the  independent  voter  when 
the  fetish  of  partisan  government  and  al- 
legiance Is  destroyed. 

We  are  doing  away  with  poorhouses 
and  robbing  old  age  of  its  terrors  through 
l)rnslons  and  Insurance,  and  the  day  is 
not  far  distant  when  representative  gov- 


DENNIS  HATHNAVGHT  235 

ernment  will  be  genuinely  what  it  implies. 

Coeval,  too,  with  the  emancipation  of 
man  and  woman,  is  coming-  the  emanci- 
pation of  the  child  and  a  growing  sense 
that  it  possesses  certain  little  rights  that 
no  one  has  any  right  to  dispute  and  which 
many  States  now  recognize.  Through 
playgrounds,  Boy  Scouts,  Campfire  Girls, 
and  other  organizations,  childhood  is  not 
only  being  made  tolerable,  but  zestful  and 
Joyous. 

We  are  getting  down  to  fundamentals — 
the  root  of  things.  We  are  no  longer  con- 
tent to  make  misery  comfortable.  Hith- 
erto by  means  of  charity,  we  have  been 
putting  vaseline  on  a  cancer.  Now  we 
would  uproot  the  cancer — do  away  with 
poverty  and  degradation  altogether,  and 
In  the  place  of  a  purposeless  proletariat, 
substitute  a  clean,  healthy,  self-reliant, 
and  ambitious  working  class.  Out  of  the 
ages  of  Servitude  Is  coming  the  Age  of 
Service.  Unmindful  of  agitator  or  dema- 
gogue, the  better  elements  of  Capital  and 
Labour  are  coming  together  as  brothers 
and  will  yet  solve  the  problem  of  work 
and  wages. 

Through  struggle  we  have  gained  se- 
curity of  life  against  Whim.  It  now  re- 
mains for  us  to  establish  the  principle  of 
Responsibility — the  right  of  man  to  cer- 
tainty of  employment  and  full  and  equi- 
table recompense  for  it,  without  injustice 
to  any  man  or  confiscation  of  his  prop- 
erty. 

Up  to  the  present  time  the  great  gov- 
erning force  of  the  world  has  been  Whim 


236  DENNIS  11  AT  HN  AUGHT 

— "God  and  my  right,"  said  the  strong 
man  with  his  heel  on  the  neck  of  the  low- 
ly. Man  is  now  becoming  insistent  that 
Whim  shall  be  replaced  by  Responsibility 
— that  the  rights  of  the  race  as  a  whole 
shall  count  for  more  than  the  desires  of 
any  individual,  even  to  the  extent  of  pull- 
ing down  his  fences  and  levelling  his  an- 
cestral castles  if  the  public  weal  demands 
it,  just  as  in  a  former  age  the  law  upheld 
the  Whim  of  a  Duchess  of  Sutherland 
who  sought  to  improve  the  landscape  by 
evicting  hundreds  of  poor  Scottish  croft- 
ers and  driving  them  into  starvation  and 
death. 

Progress,  that  strange,  inexplicable  and 
irresistible  force,  working  relentlessly,  in- 
cessantly, through  a  Law  of  Inevitability, 
is  whirling  Man  onward  to  his  Destiny. 
Even  the  Music  of  the  Spheres  seems  to 
take  on  something  of  the  chant  of  the 
Marseillaise.  After  centuries  of  thraldom 
to  superstition  and  ignorance,  man  is  be- 
ginning to  understand  real  freedom. 


THE   END. 


WITNESSES  SUMMONED  TO  TESTIFY 

Obedient  to  the  promptings  of  inherited 
behefs  and  prejudices,  often  hideous  and 
cruel,  we  are  dead  men's  slaves.  Tra- 
dition keeps  us  in  grooves  cut  long  ago 
for  our  ancestors.  In  studying  the  his- 
tory of  the  common  people,  one  cannot 
avoid  the  conclusion  that  had  there 
never  been  widespread  ignorance  and 
superstition,  there  never  would  have 
been  any  tyranny  or  political  injustice; 
and  that  the  emancipation  of  man  and 
the  happiness  of  the  race  can  only  be 
achieved  through  education  and  the  su- 
premacy of  the  educated. 

I  once  overheard  a  pompous  and  ig- 
norant city  official,  looking  over  a  pop- 
ular, illustrated  account  of  paleontology 
in  a  Sunday  newspaper,  ask  a  better 
mentally  equipped  associate  to  define  the 
difference  between  the  dinosaurus  and  the 
ichthyosaurus.  The  man  interrogated 
told  him  that  the  difference  was  almost 
imperceptible — the  only  distinction  being 
that  the  dinosaurus  had  a  binomial  equa- 
tion on  its  logarithm. 

As  this  was  said  in  all  earnestness,  tne 
explanation  was  accepted.  That  city  of- 
ficial was  a  true  descendant  of  the  fellow 
who  proposed  to  breed  gondolas.  What 
can  be  expected  in  the  way  of  good  gov- 

237 


238  DENNIS  HATHN AUGHT 

eminent  from  gentlemen  like  that?  While 
we  have  ignorant  statesmen  and  an  ig- 
norant citizenship,  all  the  socialism  that 
has  ever  been  preached  will  not  remedy 
conditions. 

Until  mankind  learns  to  appreciate  the 
useful,  and  recognizes  the  ennobling  effect 
of  work,  we  will  have  the  spectacle  of  the 
gilded  youth  wasting  his  substance  on 
chorus  girls,  and  sturdy  loafers  supported 
by  the  washtub  energy  of  wives,  mothers, 
and  sisters.  Against  such,  rich  and  poor, 
the  vagrancy  laws  should  be  enforced. 

In  this  account  of  the  struggle  between 
Dennis  Hathnaught  and  the  Lords  of 
Have-and-Hold,  it  has  been  necessary  to 
summon  many  witnesses.  Among  those 
that  have  testified  may  be  cited  the 
following: 

Lubbock's  "PreUistoric  Times"  and  "Origin  of 
Civilizatiun"  ;  Dnimmond's  "Ascent  of  5Ian"  ; 
Morgan's  "Ancient  Society"  ;  Beade's  "Martyr- 
dom of  Man";  Sir  Henry  Sumner  Maine's  Works; 
Tylor's  "Early  History  of  Mankind"  and  "Primi- 
tive Culture";  Cbarles  Darwin's  Works;  Fiquier's 
"Primitive  Man"  ;  Aescbylus'  "Prometheus 
Bound"  ;  Hesiod's  "Works  and  Days"  ;  Herodo- 
tus' History;  Tlie  Bible;  Livy's  "History  of 
Komo"  ;  Plutarch's  Lives;  Theognis ,  Aristotle's 
"Politics";  Aristophanes'  Comedies;  Plato's  "Re- 
public"; Xeuopihoiu's  "Economics";  International 
Encyclopedia;  Flaubert's  "Salammbo"  ;  Fowler's 
"Social  Life  at  Home  in  the  Age  of  Cicero";  Mot- 
ley's "Itise  of  the  Dutch  Uepublic" ;  Webster's 
Dictionary. 

Buckle's  "History  of  Civilization";  Charles  Eann 
Kennedy's  "Servant  in  the  House"  ;  Thuycldidos' 
"History  of  the  Peloponnesian  War"  ;  Keightley's 
"History  of  Greece"  ;  Thirlwall's  "History  <if 
Oret'ce"  ;  Encyclopaedia  Brltanniea ;  Mommisen's 
"History  of  Home";  Juvenal's  Satires;  Gibbon's 
"Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire";  Fcr- 
raro's  "Gri'utuess  and  Decline  of  Rome";  Ward's 
"Pure  ■StK'iology"  ;  Edward  Everett's  Works; 
Dnruy's  "Middle  Ak<'s"  ;  Robertson's  "History  of 
Charles,  the  Fifth";  Hallam's  Middle  Ages"; 
Hccker's  "Epidemics  of  the  .Middle  Ages";  lOugene 
Sue's  "Mysteries  of  the  People"  series  (De  Leon 
lr.'iiislatl«>n) "  ;  nonnemere's  "Hlstolre  des  Pay- 
Bans"  ;  I'reeiiian's  "Ilislory  of  the  Norman  Con- 
quest of   England";    i;reeu's    "lllstoiy  of    llie   )Cng- 


DENNIS  HATHNAVGHT  239 

lish  People";  Scott's  "Ivanhoe"  ;  Taine's  "History 
of  English  Literature"  ;  Sanderson's  "History  of 
the  World";  Hackwood's  "The  Good  Old 
Times";  Hume's  "History  of  England"; 
Knowles'  "William  Tell";  Guizot's  •■liistcry 
of  Civilization  in  Europe";  Menzel's  "His- 
tory of  Germany";  Chaucer;  Wicklif's  Bible; 
Froude's  "History  of  England"  ;  Harrison's  "De- 
scription of  England"  ;  Abbott's  "Common  People 
of  Ancient  Rome";  Smith's  "English  Guilds"; 
JIacaulay's  "History  of  England"  ;  General  Stew- 
art's   "Sketches  of   the   Highlanders." 

Rousseau's  "Political  Economy";  Fielding's 
"Tom  Jones";  Linton's  "George  Eliot"  in  "Wo- 
men Novelists  of  the  Reign  of  Victoria"  ;  Toyn- 
bee's  "Industrial  Revolution"  ;  Reade's  "Put 
Yourself  in  His  Place"  ;  Lockhart's  "Life  of  Na- 
poleon Buonaparte"  ;  Gibbins'  "Industrial  History 
of  England";  French  Revolution — Taine,  De- 
TocQueville,  Thiers,  Blanc,  Van  Laun,  Lamartine, 
Rocquain,  Arthur  Young,  Mignet,  Donlol,  Miche- 
let,  Alison,  Sybel,  Hausser,  Kabaut,  Buchez,  Ker- 
verseau  and  Clavelin,  Ternaux,  Madame  de  iStael, 
Janet,  Burke,  Quinet,  Berriat,  Mackintosh,  Cro- 
ker,  Dickens,  Rousseau,  Voltaire,  Carlyle;  Isham's 
"The  Mud  Cabin";  London  Chronicle;  Alison's 
"History  of  Europe";  Dean  Swift;  Lytton's  "My 
Novel"  ;  McCarthy's  "History  of  Our  Own  Times"  ; 
Westminster  Gazette;  G.  K.  Chesterton;  Man- 
chester Guardian ;  A.  St.  John  Adcock ;  English 
Government  Reports  and  Blue  Books;  Sir  Francis 
Gallon,  the  eugenist;  McCarthy's  Anti-Clerical 
Works  on  Ireland;  Lover's  "Rory  O'More"  ; 
Lecky's  "Leaders  of  Public  Opinion  in  Ireland"  ; 
Wendell  Phillips'  oration  on  0''Connell ;  Winston 
Churchill's  Home  Rule  "Speech  at  Belfast ;  Ram- 
baud's  "History  of  Russia"  ;  Gogol's  "Dead 
Souls";  Turgenief's  "Mumu"  ;  Voltaire's  "Charles 
XII." 

New  York  Sun;  Campbell's  "Pleasures  of 
Hope";  Cobden's  "Political  Writings";  Hildreth's 
"History  of  the  United  States";  Hawthorne's 
"iScarlet  Letter";  Mc'Master's  "History  of  the 
People  of  the  United  States"  ;  Tarbell's  "History 
of  the  iStandard  Oil  Company";  Jeremy  Bentham  ; 
George  Frisbie  Hoar;  Cairnes'  "The  Slave  Pow- 
er" ;  Wallon's  "History  of  Slavery" ;  Sienkie- 
wicz's  "Quo  Vadis"  ;  De  Tocqueville's  "Democ- 
racy in  America";  Mark  Twain's  "Life  on  the 
Mississippi";  The  British  Constitution;  Brinton's 
"Renaissance  in  Italian  Art"  ;  Stuart's  "Life  of 
the  Duchess  of  Gordon"  ;  Boetie's  "Voluntary 
Slavery"  (Against  One);  Heinrich  Heine;  Rogers' 
"Six  Centuries  of  Work  and  Wages"  ;  Webb's 
"History  of  Trade  Unionism";  Brentano's  "Guilds 
and  Trade  Unions"  :  Fawcett's  "Political  Econo- 
my" ;  David  Livingstone;  Lasalle ;  Herberman's 
"Business  Life  in  Ancient  Rome"  ;  Rousseau's 
"Social  Contract"  ;  Esquiros'  "Evangel  of  the 
People"  :  Karl  Marx's  "Capital"  ;  Hawthorne's 
"Blithedale  Romance"  ;  Spielhagen's  "Hammer 
and  Anvil";  Rebel's  "Woman  and  Labour";  Mof- 
fat's  "Bunty  Pulls  the  Strings"*,   The  Knights  of 


240  DENNIS  HATHNAUGHT 


Columbus ;  Industrial  Workers  of  the  World ;  New 
York  Evening  Post;  H.  C.  Lea's  "History  of  the 
Inquisition"  ;   Wiseman's   "Fabiola." 

Clay's  "Syndicalism  and  Labour";  Lewis'  "Syn- 
dicalism and  the  General  Strike";  Brooks'  "Amer- 
ican Syndicalism"  ;  Tridon's  "New  Unionism"  ; 
Swedenborg;  Browning;  Walt  Whitman;  Gleorge's 
"Progress  and  Poverty";  Harper's  Magazine; 
Quesnay  and  the  Physiocrats;  Adam  Smith;  Her- 
bert Spencer;  JIalthus  on  "Population";  Morley's 
"Diderot  and  the  Encyclopedists"  ;  Woods'  "Met- 
zerott,  Shoemaker";  Barr's  "The  Mutable  ilany"  ; 
Ditehfield's  "Old  English  Squire";  Hay's  "The 
Breadwinners"  ;  Norris'  "The  Octopus"  and  "The 
Pit";  Churchill's  "The  Inside  of  the  Cup"; 
Lytton's  "Last  of  the  Barons";  Tytler's  "History 
of  Scotland";  Hazlitt's  "Old  Cookery  Books"; 
Mrs.  TroUope's  "Domestic  Manners  of  the  Amer- 
icans"; Davitt's  "Within  the  Pale";  Crete's 
"History  of  Greece";  Ferguson's  "Greek  Im- 
perialism." 


THE  SERIO-COMIC  PROFESSION 


By   L.   J.   <le   BICKKBR. 

Author,  Stokes'  Encyclopedia  of  Music 
and  Musicians,  University  Dictionary  of 
Music  and  Musicians;  Compiler,  A  His- 
tory of  the  United  States  by  the  Presi- 
dents; and  for  twenty-five  years  a  news- 
paper man,  writer  of  books  and  pub- 
lishers' hack. 

This  is  a  book  for  writers,  and  for  such 
readers  as  may  be  interested  in  them  and 
their  craft.  Letters  is  the  Serio-Comic 
Profession,  the  author  maintains,  be- 
cause the  middleman  is  permitted  to  reap 
most  of  the  material  rewards.  There  are 
essays,  mostly  in  lighter  vein,  discussing 
"Human  Interest,"  "Cost  of  Making 
Books,"  "Defects  in  Copyright,"  "Literary 
Piracy,"  etc.,  in  which  helpful  informa- 
tion is  given.  Chester  S.  Lord's  authori- 
tative interview  on  Journalism,  examples 
of  the  "Jokesmith  Papers,"  "The  Music 
Critic  Confesses,"  etc.,  are  reprinted  with 
the  permission  of  the  New  York  Sun,  the 
New  York  Times,  the  New  York  Evening 
Post,  and  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  in  which 
they  were  originally  published.  Uniform 
in  format  and  binding  with  "The  Rise  of 
Dennis  Hathnaught."    Price  $1. 


Tbe   Writers'   Fabllsblner   Co. 
Brooklyn New  York. 


THE  NEWSPAPER  WORKER 


Designed  For  All  Who  Write,  But  Addressed 
Especially  to  the  Reporter  Who  May 
Have  Only  a  Vague  Notion  of  the 
Aims,  Scope,  and  Require- 
ments of  His  Profession 
By    JAMES    PHILIP    MCCARTHY. 

Dr.  Talcott  Williams,  of  the  Pulitzer 
School  of  Journalism,  declares  that  the 
instructions  to  the  new  reporter  about 
the  way  to  gather  material  for  his  stories 
constitute  an  original  feature  and  are 
the  best  he  has  seen. 

Some  copies  of  the  original  edition  re- 
main on  hand,  and  will  be  sold  at  $1 
net.  The  new  edition  will  be  $1.25  net, 
postage    prepaid. 

Chicago  Record-Herald: — Packed  full 
of  helpful  hints  and  advice  to  writers, 
especially   reporters. 

New  York  Sun: — Many  an  experienced 
reporter  may  derive  useful  hints  from 
his  advice. 

New  York  American: — If  the  power  to 
write  a  fresh,  clear  and  pat  story 
for  a  daily  newspaper  can  be  ac- 
quired from  any  book  it  must  be  from 
the  Newspaper  Worker. 

Boston  Herald: — A  volume  of  unusual 
value. 

New  York  Telegram: — It  contains  com- 
plete analysis  of  all  forms  of  news 
showing    the    points    to    cover    and    the 


TIu'    AVrlterM'    PiibllHliinsr    Co. 
Ilrookl.vu-\o\v    York,     U.     S.    A. 


questions  to  ask  to  glean  information, 
and  in  addition  to  this,  under  appropriate 
headings,  are  grouped  "hint  words"  that 
will  be  found  invaluable  to  the  writer. 
For  example,  if  one  is  dealing  with  a 
murder,  "The  Newspaper  Worker"  not 
only  shows  just  how  to  handle  the  case 
in  bringing  out  the  telling  points,  but 
furnishes  carefully  graded  lists  of  words 
relating  to  passion  and  its  development 
which  cannot  be  other  than  helpful  in 
facilitating  writing  and  doing  away  with 
poverty  of  language. 

Another  valuable  section  of  the  book 
relates  to  "Personal  and  Natural  Descrip- 
tion." This  is  gotten  up  on  a  plan  orig- 
inal with  the  author  of  "The  Newspaper 
Worker,"  and  the  material  is  so  arranged 
that,  no  matter  how  meagre  one's  vocab- 
ulary, the  writer  must  be  a  dunce,  indeed, 
if  he  cannot  make  use  of  it.  Systematic 
instrutions  for  the  describing  of  every 
sort  and  condition  of  man  and  all  man- 
ner of  natural  scenes  here  await  the 
eager  writer. 

An  illuminating  chapter  concerns  the 
writing  and  editing  of  stories,  setting 
forth  the  best  methods  of  work  employ- 
ed on  the  leading  newspapers.  The  or- 
ganization and  the  work  of  the  compos- 
ing and  press  rooms  are  not  neglected, 
and  there  are  instructive  chapters  on 
those  little  known  arts,  "Heading  Writ- 
ing" and  "Proof-Reading." 

Nor  is  the  scientific  side  of  the  lan- 
guage overlooked.  "The  Newspaper  Work- 
er" contains  complete  treatises  on  gram- 
mar and  rhetoric  as  well  as  on  verbal 
distinctions.  The  mass  of  information 
crowded  into  these  pages  is  amazing,  and 
the  verbal  distinctions  appear  to  com- 
prise a  digest  of  the  best  work  of  Rich- 

The   Writers'    Publishing:    Co. 
Brooklyn-Neiv  York,   U.   S.  A. 


ard  Grant  White,  Alfred  Ayres,  William 
Cullen  Bryant,  and  other  noted  students 
of  words. 

To  the  man  that  is  seeking  an  educa- 
tion with  no  teacher  save  himself,  "The 
Newspaper  Worker"  cannot  be  other 
than  helpful.  It  contains  a  "key"  to  self- 
culture  and  the  systematic  and  intelligent 
study  of  literature. 


PUYS,  PUYERS,  AND  PLAYWRIGHTS 


A  Survey  of  the  Drama  and  Its  Develop- 
ment in  Every  Age,  and  Among 
Every  People 
By  li.    J.   de   BEKKER. 

This  book  of  more  than  800  pages, 
royal  octavo  size,  gives  brief  biographies 
of  all  the  important  dramatic  authors, 
actors,  actresses,  and  the  stories  of  more 
than  150  of  the  world's  greatest  plays, 
information  about  all  matters  related  to 
the  stage,  and  will,  it  is  hoped,  prove  a 
popular  guide  and  reference  book  for 
the  student  and  theatre-goer  no  less  than 
to  members  of  the  theatrical  profession. 
The  arrangement  is  alphabetical,  and  a 
simple  system  of  cross-references  adds 
greatly  to  the  convenience  of  those  seek- 
ing information.  The  difficulty  of  ob- 
taining material  for  a  final  revision  from 
abroad,  owing  to  the  World  War,  com- 
pels the  postponement  of  publication  un- 
til the  autumn  of  1916. 


The   Wrltem'    PaltlinhliiK    Co. 
Brooklyn-New   York,   U.   S.    \. 


THE  LIBRARY 

ISNIVERSl'i  V  OJ  CALIF>i>XMA 

LOS  ANG^iLES 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


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